Quotes from Thomas Piketty

I'm not as pessimistic as what a number of people seem to believe.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.

I don't live in the Cold War. Some people maybe still live in the Cold War, but this is their problem, not mine.

We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information.

Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.

Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels that are compatible with democratic ideals.

One way to have broader access to wealth is to reduce the tax on the large group and increase the tax on the very top so concentration of wealth doesn't get to extreme levels.

I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am not terribly impressed by those who know in advance what will or will not happen.

The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s.

Capitalism and market forces are very powerful in producing wealth and innovation. But we need to ensure that these forces act in the common interest.

My premise is not to tax to destroy the wealth of the wealthy; it's to increase the wealth of the bottom and the middle class.

Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.

The principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge.

What I argue for is a progressive tax, a global tax, based on the taxation of private property.

Yeah, I am in favor of migration. But I am also in favor of education. But at the same time, I am in favor of progressive taxation. I think we need all of this. I think we don't have to choose one.

Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.

Private property and the market system are good not only to promote innovation and to promote growth; private property and the market system are good for our personal freedom.

I am afraid that if you don't find peaceful domestic solutions to our inequality and social problems, then it's always tempting to find other people responsible for our problems.

There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so.

I don't pretend that I can predict the future value of the growth rate or rate of return.

Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at the end of the day, we don't know very much in economics.

I think inequality is fine, as long as it is in the common interest. The problem is when it gets so extreme, when it becomes excessive.

'Das Kapital,' I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.