Capital in the Twenty-First Century

I finally got around to reading Pikkety's breakout book, and I can report that it's a classic for a reason. With his now trademark deep research and quantitative rigor, Piketty examines the nature of the global financial system and why inequality builds over time. There are some flaws in here, particularly around the economic history of the Americas, and a lot of space is spent on monetary policy with very little payoff. From this perspective this book can be viewed as an unfinished version of Piketty's more recent books which are superior in nearly every way. If you want to go back to the original, however, you'll still be in for a treat. Highly recommend

In Capital in the 21th Century, Piketty investigates the changes that have occurred over the last two centuries in capital and in its distribution across the globe and across people. He also tries to figure out where it is all heading.

Concluding that there's nothing really keeping big money from growing faster than the capital of less fortunate people, he discusses possible solutions to make the distribution more even (most importantly wealth tax)

The book took me a very long time to read. While it may not look like it, it's pretty slow to read because Piketty tends to go into longwinded and detailed analysis of seemingly uninteresting facts. The reason he does, is to make sure that people understand to which depths he went to come to his conclusions.

All-in-all, I found this a very interesting read, although, I would have preferred a more condensed version, that's more focused and with some of the longer analyses moved to an appendix (or online, or another book)

Piketty outlines the case for the inequality r>g (rate of return on capital > growth of overall economy) with extensive documentation. From this simple rule he describes the forces which lead to the rise of a rentier class that can live very well off inherited wealth which isn't necessarily socially useful. Ultimately I disagree with his solutions to this problem but it seems fairly hard to challenge the idea that wealth above a certain level tends to reproduce itself. Reinvestment of a portion of the returns on capital leads to a natural process of accumulation which Piketty argues will lead to a dangerous level of wealth concentration in the hands of a very few. Throughout the book he's very open about the strengths and weaknesses of his sources and openly declares his personal opinion about wealth accumulation. He did a tremendous amount of research and analysis and that's the main reason for my high rating: he backed up his opinions with historical and modern data. The policies he proposes are debateable but he establishes the premise (r>g) in extensive detail and across a broad range of countries and time periods. Few would accuse him of using too little data and historical sources.

I'm no economist, but to my ears Piketty makes a reasonable, readable, and engaging case for a new sort of tax to help close the growing disparity between the world's richest and poorest peoples.

Piketty recognizes that this sort of global tax is a utopia, but fails to acknowledge the sad truth that as long as the richest have a disproportionately loud voice in political decisions, nothing will ever change.