Capitalism in the 21st Century

Infographic on Piketty by IDEAS at TED Capitalism in the Twenty First Century by Piketty

Detailed Summary of Piketty -- Chapter by Chapter

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2015

Reviewers have called it a 700-page punch in the plutocracy’s gut. The title of Piketty’s magnum opus suggests that he is updating Das Kapital, to bring Marx into the 21^st century. Piketty documents a sharp increase in income inequalities over the last 25 years, not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, with people with the highest incomes far outstripping the rest of society. However, he goes far beyond the compilation of statistics, and provide a grand unified theory about the deep forces which have shaped human history over centuries. His analysis points out a fundamental conflict between free markets and democracy, directly contrary to widely accepted conventional wisdom that the two go together.

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