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Thomas Piketty

lines on the record: 58
first: 2022-04-20
most recent: 2022-04-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Because it's difficult, of course, to set up the right institution. But we can learn from history. And, you know, I'm trying with my work to contribute to this collective process of learning from history and how to build better institutions to have a better world.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is too nihilistic for me. I mean, he has some talent. He makes me think a lot to Celine. You know, Selene, you know, if you know Selena, Novelist of the interwar period in France who wrote this incredible novel Voyage Lanui, which is an incredible novel, basically when he tells us his experience during World War I and then after World War I, he goes to Africa, then he goes to Detroit. Basically, he's completely desperate about World War I. Of course, he's desperate about colonialism. He's desperate about capitalism in Detroit. He's completely nihilistic. But he has a lot of talent. Well, I think well back is about the same. So he has a lot of talent, but in terms of political views, to me, it's just very elistic. I mean, I had the opportunity to have debate with him and public discussion with him. He's too nihilistic for me. I believe we can make the world better. I believe the promise with institutions, not with people. I think human beings are basically good, so to speak. And just the institutions are not always at the level of the human beings. But, you know,”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“fair solution, you need to do exactly what you say, but together with redistribution of wealth and income, and not only in the north, but also in the south. So I think that's perfectly complementary with what I am saying.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, look, I am in favor of more migration and more open borders. And roughly speaking, I am in favor of more control of capital and capital flows and less control of labor flows. And whereas today we sort of do the opposite. We have completely free capital flows and no fiscal coordination about corporate taxation or capital taxation. And we have strong restriction of labor flows. But, you know, I think it's important to address the two issues together because if you only open labor flows without changing the regulation of capital and wealth taxation, then okay you're going to reduce inequality in the sense that many people from the south might benefit but you're going to increase inequality within the population that today live in the north and the big winners may be top people in the north also top people in the south but you know bottom people in the north will lose so i think you know if you want to”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“etc. Which is very paradoxical in a way the fact that Europe has led the movement toward more tax competition and corporate taxation because Europe has a bigger welfare state to pay for than the US and I think this shows that political institutions so the fact that you have federal corporate tax and income tax in the US but not in Europe make a difference. So anyway we could talk a lot more about this but that's basically my view.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To make their taxpayer pay more or less tax and to take budgetary decisions. So today we are in this strange situation where each national parliament has in effect a veto power on all budgetary and fiscal decision. And indeed, I think one way to go beyond that is to actually put this national parliament's members together, you know, maybe one week per month in the European Assembly to vote over budgetary decisions. Now, what will come out of this? I don't know, but I trust democracy. I think it could bring more social justice and fiscal justice if I just take one example, which is corporate taxation. Remember that the US until Trump had a federal corporate tax rate of 35%. And in addition, the state corporate tax rate, whereas in Europe, corporate tax competition had led corporate tax rate to go toward 20%.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“members of national parliament will come and be in front of each other they will be there in proportion to the population of each country and in proportion to the size of each political group in each country you know it's not just country against country because you know when you have the head of state of germany the head of state of france the head of state of sweden or the minister of finance of germany france and sweden when you have only one individual to represent the interest of 80 million germans or 65 million french it's a sort of machinery to make sort of national interest against national interest whereas in fact you know within germany or within france or within the netherlands people disagree obviously they have different political leanings so and i think the current european parliament is not enough because in the end it's really the national parliament you know the german bundestag the french assembl ⁇ e national who have the political legitimacy”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember what happened last year with the post-COVID recovery plan. In effect, France and Germany put so much pressure on the Netherlands, Sweden, et cetera, that in the end there was unanimity to have common borrowing and a recovery plan. But in a way, this was a sort of fake unanimity, which there's a risk that in the end you make everybody unhappy because people who are forced to agree. In effect, what happened is that France and Germany told Netherlands and Sweden, okay, if you don't want to come in, we're going to have a separate arrangement between us and we will do it without you. So they said, okay, we will do it with you. But I don't think this is the right way to organize political decision. I think we should have majority rule decision making and not based on country against country. That's why, you know, the proposal we are making in the manifesto for the democratization of Europe is to have a European assembly where”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's even less than the nobility in France in 1789 where the nobility was about 1% of the population and they had veto power about taxation. So I'm saying this cannot continue for very long. So in the proposal we've been making, what I want to say regarding your question is that it's not open only to large countries. It's also open to every country in the European Union or even outside the European Union which may want to join at some point. So I'm just saying if you take Germany, France, Italy, Spain, these four countries make almost 80% of the population and GDP of the Eurozone. So if these four countries are ready to go, I think they should go. They should try to convince as many other countries as possible. But I think the current arrangement where officially we have the unanimity rule for all fiscal and budgetary matters.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“social justice, fiscal justice. And so I think one of the solutions, certainly not the only one, you know, is to be able to make a majority rule decision making over taxation. You know, I think the problem today is that if Luxembourg wants to put their veto on taxation of multinationals or taxation of billionaires in Europe, then you cannot do anything together in spite of the fact that Luxembourg with 300 Hussain inhabitants.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, so you know, I have been involved in writing this manifesto for the democratization of Europe, and so we have made, you know, with a very large group of scholars from all over Europe, lawyers, political scientists, economists. We have been proposing concrete changes in the treaties that organize the European Union. So, you know, we are making very concrete proposals on improving the working of the European Union. And indeed, you know, I am a European federalist. I am a European, what I call social federalist in the sense that, you know, I want federalism to be able to deliver more social justice, to deliver more popular support to Europe, which, you know, today is not exactly the case if you look at the Brexit vote, lower income groups voted to exit, upper income groups and upper education group voted to stay. So I think there's something wrong going on. So I think we need a different kind of Europe which brings more.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And look, I understand these are complicated decisions to be made. Now, is this a reason to forget about it and say, okay, we don't care anymore? I don't think so. I think this would be the worst answer. So I fully recognize the complexity of the task. I'm certainly not trying to say this is easy, etc. But I reiterate my claim that if you abandon any attempt for justice, then you are in a very difficult situation to prepare the future. Because then people will tell you, okay, you care about this kind of expropriation and injustices, but you don't care about this other kind. So you have to try to develop some universal approach to justice in terms of objective criteria, including the distribution of income, the distribution of wealth, access to education. I don't know any other approach.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think IT should be part of that. I think there are lots of people in Haiti who would like to monitor how this money is being used. Look, I'm not saying this is simple, but reparations are never simple. You know, I can tell you, you know, in my country, you had to wait until 1999, 2000. So, you know, almost only 20 years ago for an official commission to look seriously at post-World War II reparation and Jewish expropriation during World War II. So, you know, this process take time. If you look in the US, remember, you know, you have to wait until 1988 to see a law adopted by US Congress to have reparation for the Japanese American, which, as you know, were interned during World War II. And during many decades, people were saying, oh, that's impossible, that's too complicated, where are we going to draw the line? Where are we going to stop? How can you decide the amount?”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's certainly not what I am proposing. So, you know, what I am proposing is, of course, that whenever there is a transfer for reparation or for development aid or whatever you want, we need to have a very strict monitoring of individuals who might get rich or get the money about this and whether they are in the public sector, in the private sector, wherever they are. We should be very strict about that. That's for sure.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some point some of the debt was solved by the French bankers to a consortium of US bankers. But anyway, to make a long story short, IT effectively repaid between 1825 and 1957, so almost a century and a half, an enormous public debt in order, in effect, to compensate the French revenues for their loss of property. I think it is impossible to say today, okay, this is too old. We don't care because, you know, there are reparations that are being made today for expropriation and various injustices that took place during World War II or sometime even during World War I. So if you say for Haiti this is too late and for this other reparation or expropriation during World War II, we can still do reparation. I think you have a problem because then it makes it very difficult to develop a language of neutrality.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think France should pay. So, you know, let me just summarize, remind the story very quickly. You know, this is an example. So when Haiti came independent and when the French state recognized finally in 1825 the independence of Haiti, the French state said, okay, we are going to recognize your independence only if you pay us a huge amount of money, which was the equivalent of 300% of GDP of IT, of 1825, in order to compensate the French slave owners for their loss of property. This, of course, was impossible to repay in one year or in a few years. So French bankers came, refinanced the debt, and in the end the debt was repaid until the 1950s. You have payment to the Bank of France until 1957. And so there was many renegotiations.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The perversity and the bad incentives come from the private sectors in all these examples, not the public sector where you have salary scale, which in some cases could be reduced further, but which are in general much more reasonable than in the private sector, as far as I can see.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, the example you mentioned is very important because But I don't think in any of this country, give me an example of a political leader who became billionaire by taking money when he was in office.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The corruption you have in mind, is it in the government of Sweden or France or Germany or is it in the private companies?”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but again, if I look at the history of state construction and welfare state development in Sweden or France or Germany, I don't see what episode you have in mind exactly.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, this is because I believe in anonymous rules. It's not a belief, you know, it's not a religious belief or a religious faith. I study history. I see that governments under certain conditions have been able to develop public education system, public health system, tax administration, following anonymous rules which have been working pretty well and which we can improve, we should improve, whereas deciding on an individual basis who is honorable, who is not honorable, it's a very different kind of business. And I think indeed that government are not elected to do these kind of things. But how do you keep”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does not prevent you from being prosperous. Look, at the level of Europe, we have 27 countries in the European Union. If you look in terms of tax-to-GDP ratio, the countries with the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio are Bulgaria and Romania. The countries with the highest tax-to-GDP ratio are Denmark and Sweden. So, you know, if it was enough in order to become rich, to have a small government, you know, Bulgaria and Romania would be richer than Denmark and Sweden. So, you know, we know that things are more complicated. And it depends what you do with your tax revenue. So, you know, if you use it well, then it's obvious from this evidence that this is complementary with high prosperity.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but this is not comparable in size. I don't think it makes sense. Again, if you want to compare region of about 10 million inhabitants, which is the size of Switzerland, you find many other regions with comparable GDP per capita all across Europe. You know, there are many good things in Switzerland, by the way. You know, I think the local democratic system has lots of good aspects to it. The education system, I think there's a lot to learn from each of these experimental in the US, as a much smaller government, Sweden or Denmark or France, but I think there's a lot to learn historically from the US in terms of equality. And I think the enormous educational advance that was there in the US, you know, in the 19th century, in the middle of the 20th century, is key to understand many of the issues I refer to. Now, you know, the case of Norway shows that you can also have a very generous welfare state and that certainly.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Norway in order to restart the oil production in order to make the European Commission happy and the European Commission looks as ugly as it can possibly look, which unfortunately is sometimes an accurate description where oil production is so important that you're ready in effect to tolerate things that in fact you should not tolerate but anyway this was just a side not about Norway but anyway oil you know is playing an important role”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I can tell you the banking sector and the status as the tax haven still brings an additional income of at least 10 or 20 percent to Switzerland. But I agree with you. Switzerland will still be rich even without this. But there will be a bit poorer and they will certainly not be richer than if you compare to, say, the Paris region in GDP per capita or the London region. If you take the wealthiest region. So you have to compare it's important to compare countries of comparable size, regions of comparable size. You mentioned Norway. Again, Norway without the oil would be more comparable to Sweden and Martin in terms of GDP per capita. And now the oil is making them richer. But, you know, I think this oil should actually remain in the ground. I don't know if you've seen this incredible TV series Occupy, which today is what's happening in Ukraine, this is a series where Russian invaded.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, Switzerland, it's a very small country, so you know, it's about the size. Actually, it's smaller than Ile-de-France, you know, which is a Paris region. If you were to make a separate country out of Ile-de-France, you know, GDP per capita, I think, would actually be higher than Switzerland. You know, of course, you can always take a wealthy region in a country and say, okay, I don't want to share anything with the rest of the country. I'm going to kick my tax revenue for me. I'm going to be tax haven based on bank secrecy. And, you know, that's going to make you 10 or 20% richer.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, for people who have millions or billions, maybe 100 is like zero. They don't make the difference. But for people who are at zero, having 100, 200, put you in a position in terms of bargaining power vis- ⁇-vis the rest of society is very different. And I think it's very complementary to cultural capital and human capital because 200,000 euro, okay, that's not going to make you buy an apartment in Paris. That's not enough. But there are many other cities which, you know, for many people are more enjoyable where you can actually buy an apartment or house. You can start a business. It makes a real difference for bottom 50% people.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to rust 50% children. But I think it will make a big difference in terms of real opportunity to start a business, but also more generally wealth has big impact on your bargaining power in life. So when you don't own anything, when you just”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, in France today, that would be 120,000 euros. You know, if the average wealth is 200,000 euros per adult, so everybody will receive 120,000 euros at age 25. So people who today would receive 120,000 euros at age 25, people who today receive 1 million will still receive 600,000 after the progressive taxation of inheritance and wealth that's paying for that. We would still be very, very far from equality of opportunity. And if you want my opinion, I think we could and we should go beyond that. But just doing that will increase the share of bottom 50% children in total inheritance, which today is between 2% in the US, 4% in France. It will be 20 to 25%, which is still much less than 50% because after all, there are”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bottom 50% children in a generation in France today or in the US today, they basically receive nothing at all inheritance. And whereas the top 10% children will receive 60-70% of the total. So we are very far, let's say the least, from equality of opportunities. This is the list you can say, which is interesting because equality of opportunity is a theoretical concept that people very often say they are in favor of it. But if you try to move in a concrete manner toward more equality of opportunity, for instance, by redistributing inheritance, you know, people get completely crazy and say, oh, how could you do that? So, you know, I'm making proposals about this in my recent books, saying, okay, maybe everybody at age 25 should receive a minimum inheritance. Let's say it could be 60% of average wealth.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, through educational expansion, through more labor rights. But if you look at the distribution of wealth, you know, what's very striking is that, okay, the top 10% wealth share has declined in the long run. It used to be 80, 90% of the total in the 19th century in Europe today. It's more 50, 60% in Europe. In the US, it would be more 60, 70%. People can disagree about the details, but these are really details as compared to this order of magnitude. It has been mostly to the benefit of the next 40%, which is already good. But if you look at the bottom 50% of the distribution, they have 2% of total wealth in the US. They have 4% in Europe or in a country like France. It's a bit better than 2%, but basically they have nothing. So if you take in particular, you know, the”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“resources in the sort of early schools were more socially advantaged students go to than in the sort of normal university schemes where more socially disadvantaged students tend to go to. So through public funding sometimes you actually magnify initial inequalities rather than reduce them. So there's enormous hypocrisy everywhere and to me making more effective equality in access to education is absolutely central. That being said, I also want to redistribute wealth and inheritance and property because you know if you only have high education but you have no wealth at all it's more complicated it's more complicated to buy a home for your family you know it's more complicated to start up a business you know in the long run there's been a movement toward more equality of income labor income”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I think all of these are important because you know if you only have a high control capital living in Paris or London is going to be difficult given the rent level. So I think you want to care about both. And so I care a lot about making access to education more egalitarian and as I told you France, there's a lot of inequality and a lot of hypocrisy everywhere in terms of access to education in France. I mean in the US you have all this work by Russia, TMNLSI showing the relation between parental income, percentile and access to higher education, the level of hypocrisy about the claim that are being made about equal opportunity and blah blah blah when you look at what you see in the data you know we are very far from there but there's a lot of hypocrisy everywhere in terms of unequal access to education in my country in France we put three times more public”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, I hadn't teach in Paris. I was in London a long time ago as a student, but I'm not teaching there. Cultural capital is part of what I am interested. You know, when I look at the inequalities in education and access to education, this is about cultural capital. When I look, I try to understand the changing structure of political privileges and who votes for whom and which party and coalition, which is a topic on which I've been working quite a bit in recent years. Cultural inequality and different access to education and reversal of education cleavage over time is certainly very important. But maybe I don't get exactly your question, maybe if you tell me again.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, you know, what I care about is access to fundamental goods like education, health, participation to the political life, participation to economic life. So ultimately, this is what I care about, income and wealth per se are just mechanism and tools and ways to go in this direction. But in the end, what's really important for me is to have the highest possible opportunities and rights to access fundamental good for everybody. This is all what matters.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“vacation and go to the US federal law in that respect so in terms of welfare i mean my own view as you can imagine is that you know when you multiply your productivity by 10 over the past century it actually makes sense you know to take some of this increase in productivity to have more vacation to spend more time with your children and family to spend more time traveling around the world and you know for me like for many Europeans the idea of taking only two weeks in vacation over the summer when you are so rich”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so in terms of welfare as an economist, you know what matters is productivity, not income per se, because if you have higher income just because you work longer hours, the effect on welfare is ambiguous. It depends how you value leisure versus work, etc. And presumably, if European countries decided to have more vacation and a bigger reduction of working times than the US in the 20th century, by the way, this was not the case a century ago, in the early 20th century, working hours were actually shorter in the US than Europe, partly because productivity was higher so you can afford working less. But anyway, today in the past century, the decline in working hours has been bigger in Germany and France. Presumably, this was a choice. I mean, this was a complicated political process, but nobody in Germany or France today is proposing to divide by two the number of weeks.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it's your interested in welfare, you need to look at productivity. So, you know, that's the first thing. So you need to look at GDP per hour of work or income per hour of work. And you probably know very well, you know, if you look at OECD data or Bureau of Labor Statistics series in the US, which are almost similar or Eurostat series, everywhere you go to, you know, you will see that GDP per hour of work is virtually the same in US, Germany, France. It's a few percent different. I'm sure you know this series.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At play was the big increase in real estate price. In fact, wealth inequality should have declined, or at least top wealth share should have declined relative to the middle, which obviously is not what we see. And there is some disagreement about the magnitude of the increase in top 12 shares, but nobody is saying that top 12 shares have been declining in recent decades in any country. So by definition, the real estate argument is not going to explain what we see for the wealth distribution. So then, you know, it depends what segment of the distribution you are interested in. But if you're interested at the top share, I mean, if you're interested at the very top, you know, billionaire wealth, which after all is interesting in its own sake and its non-negligible fraction of total wealth, I think, again, nobody is saying that real estate is explaining this. If you see a paper saying that, please send it to me.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think again, it depends whether you look at aggregate wealth or you look at the distribution of wealth. If you look at aggregate wealth, then real estate is a really big part of the increase in aggregate wealth-to-income ratio, especially in Europe, less so in the US. In the U.S., the aggregate wealth-to-income ratio increased much less in Europe. But for the aggregate West-2 income ratio, especially in Europe or Japan, real estate is the central explanation. There's no doubt about this. Now, if you look at the distribution, it's a very different story. In fact, the increase of the relative price of real estate asset relative to, say, stock market prices or financial assets is actually relatively good overall for the middle class as compared to the very top, you know, because the middle class owns mostly real estate and whereas the top owns mostly financial and business assets. So if the only four”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The role of real estate in aggregate wealth accumulation, and it's absolutely central for many countries over many periods of time. We cannot have any disagreement on that because this is our data, this is what we did almost 10 years ago. But that's not going to explain, for instance, what happens at the top of the distribution because real estate is absolutely ineligible when you look at the billionaire wealth. Here you need other stories.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if you look at the top of the wealth distribution, I don't see a lot of real estate. I don't think Matt Runley or anyone who is saying the huge rise in billionaire wealth in the US has anything to do with real estate. As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to put this theory on the table. So I'm not saying real estate is not important. I think for middle class assets and lower middle class and upper middle class assets, for the middle of the distribution, real estate is of course very important and the movement in real estate prices explain a lot of what's going on both in terms of aggregate value, distribution. So I'm not saying it's not important. It is very important and if you go back to a paper with Gabriel Zuchman which was published now almost 10 years ago in the Quartet Journal of Economics in 2014 called Capitalist Bank Wealth Income Ratio in the long run 1700-2010 you will see we have complete decomposition”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, because there's been a huge educational expansion since then, you know, between 1950 and 1990 and until today, you know, educational expansion in France and throughout Europe and most of the world has been considerable. And so it is true in the 1950s, France, to a large extent, Western Europe is lagging behind the US in terms of educational achievement. And to me, it's clear that the key reason why the US has been an economic leader at the world level for most of the 20th century is because it was an educational leader. And in the 1950s, as you know very well, you have 90% of a generation going to high school in the US, whereas in France or actually Belief system and the perception that you know families have about education, about the culture of education, so all these different dimensions have to be studied together, obviously.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The answer to this question. I would suspect concentration of forest inequality was always pretty large in these pre-18th century period. But from what I read and I tried to read carefully most of what is written on this topic, I'm not sure we have the data sources to really answer these questions, unfortunately. This is why I try to focus on the more recent period, which is still very long.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More optimistic in a way, you know, I think if you look at this shorter period, but which is still very long, two century and a half, you know, 1780, 2020, you see this political movement toward more equality. To be honest, I must admit, I must confess that I am always a bit skeptical about some of the data sources before the late 18th century, you know, partly because I know them less well, so I feel less confident with them, partly because when I don't have a census, when I don't have tax administration, when I don't even know the population that is out there and how it is changing over time, you know, I find it very, very difficult to say, you know, did the concentration of wealth increase in Europe between 1500 and 1750, let alone the question of did it increase between the end of the Roman Empire and 1500. I don't know.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“development of public school system or public health system. And over this period, this has led to a very strong movement toward more equality in all these dimensions and also toward more economic prosperity. And I stress this. Now, before this period, I'm aware that there are people, Greg Clark and others, who stress the continuity across eight centuries of the perpetuation of status inequality. There are also historians like Scheidel going back to the Neolithic period or to ancient history who stress a relatively pessimistic perspective in the sense that they say, okay, without major destruction or war, you never have a reduction of inequality. I mean, all this work is very interesting, but the perspective I stress is a bit different.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, this is very interesting. Every time there is a lot of historical data collection, I am very interested. And so this is very interesting work. Now, that being said, I find the perspective a bit too conservative in a way, and maybe because it's very long run, but my period of study is the period ranging from the end of the 18th century until today. So this is 1780, 2020, if you want. And over these two centuries and a half, what I see is a movement toward more equality, both in terms of political rights, but also in terms of social and economic equality. And what I argue is that this process is very much related to political development, political revolution, slave revolt, wars of independence, tax reform, changing balance of power between capital and labor, development of social security.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“sometimes tax reform, sometimes political confrontation of all sorts play a major role. You know, I had to develop this perspective and indeed this is a big difference with the Annal School. You know, the Annal School in a way did not sort of disappear before reaching the 20th century. They were not confronted to the same kind of issues that I was confronted just because I write later than them with data covering the more recent period. And so, you know, I had to develop a different perspective and a different kind of interpretation. Yes, stressing the role of politics and political institution and fiscal institution, social institution, and the like.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“perspective, stressing the sort of long run evolution, the sort of deterministic economic forces. When you study the 20th century, politics is everywhere because World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, the creation of social security systems, the development of progressive taxation, decolonization and apartheid. Politics is everywhere, if you want to understand the evolution of inequality. I would say it's also to some extent the same for the 19th century and the end of the 18th century. I talk about the French Revolution and the slave revolt in Saint-Domain. So I think the history of equality or inequality cannot just be an economic history. It has to be a political history because if you want to account for what you see, if you want to explain what you see, it's political processes, sometimes revolution.”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so you're right, you know, I don't know if this is an extremely politically radical, but you're perfectly right that, you know, one big difference between the work I've been doing and the workload or Labruce were doing is that I had to deal a lot with the 20th century, whereas these people were working a lot on previous centuries, you know, 18th century, 19th century, or even before in the case of Rodel. And so working on 20th century data and in particular the enormous reduction of income inequality during the 20th century led me to a different kind of perspective and a different kind of thinking and issue. So to be very precise, the political dimension is sort of much more important in a way unavoidable and impossible to escape when you study the 20th century. Maybe you can have this sort of Marxist or eco-”
2022-04-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Thomas Piketty on the Politics of Equality · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source