At a time when the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few has resurfaced as a central political issue, Piketty doesn’t just offer invaluable documentation of what is happening, with unmatched historical depth. This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.Ĭapital in the Twenty-First Century is, as I hope I’ve made clear, an awesome work. The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to “patrimonial capitalism,” in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties. It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age - or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle Époque - defined by the incredible rise of the “one percent.” But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty’s work. Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The New York Review of Books, Review of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”īy Thomas Piketty, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammerīelknap Press/Harvard University Press, 685 pp., $39.95 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
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