This shows that there is tremendous interest in inequality these days all over the world - and here locally in Arizona and Mesa.
There's a big concern over whether globalisation is benefiting everyone or is being captured by a small group of the population and what’s new in this book is that many researchers from more than 30 countries have put together the largest historical database on income and wealth inequality that has ever been put together. So that’s really what is new. Picketty studies inequality from a historical perspective.
" . . . When people are unable to solve their social and unemployment and domestic problems through peaceful policies, then it is always tempting to blame others . . . "
In this edition of Global Conversation Isabelle Kumar speaks to him about his vision of economics and society . . .
What are your three favourite books?
“That’s complicated. In my book I talk a lot about Balzac ‘Le Père Goriot’, and indeed I think this was such a powerful way to talk about capitalism in the 19th century.
Marx was saying in the 1860s that it was by reading Balzac that he learned the most about capitalism.
I think this is the same today but you have to switch authors so one my favourite novel recently was the latest novel of Carlos Fuentes ‘La volunta y la fortuna’ which is an incredible novel about capitalism in Mexico.
Tancrède Voituriez who is a young French author who recently wrote about ‘the invention of poverty’ (L’invention de la pauvreté), which is a very funny novel about how development economists pretend to save the world and don’t always do so. So you have lot of very powerful novels that put money and capitalism at the centre of their investigation.”
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http://www.euronews.com/2015/10/14/rocking-the-establishment-thomas-piketty-s-challenge-to-orthodox-economics/
