Thomas Piketty On Income Inequality: 'We Can Do Better'

Published April 29, 2014 at 11:47 AM CDT

French economist Thomas Piketty helped popularize the notion of a privileged 1 percent. In his new book, he sounds a grim warning: The U.S. economy is beginning to decay into the aristocratic Europe of the 19th century. (Emmanuelle Marchadour/Harvard Press via AP)

French intellectual phenomenon economist Thomas Piketty is generating headlines with his bestseller, “Capital in the Twenty-first Century.”

Piketty focuses on the danger of income inequality and he’s calling for an overall tax on wealth. On NPR’s On Point this morning, he said:

“Wealth levels above $100 million or $1 billion seem to be rising at 6 to 7 percent per year, you know, of course a middle class family doesn’t get that rate of return right now. So this creates a tendency toward excess concentration of wealth. But that doesn’t mean that we want to go to full equality of wealth. Right now, the bottom half of the U.S. population owns about 2 percent of U.S. national wealth. If it was full equality it should be 50 percent. I’m not saying it should be 50 percent, I’m just saying maybe we can do better than 2 percent.”

Hear the On Point interview and read an excerpt of the book

Thomas Piketty On Income Inequality: 'We Can Do Better'

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