Thomas Piketty Won 2014

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/thomas_piketty_s_capital_how_the_french_professor_changed_economics_conversation.html


French economist Thomas Piketty speaks to journalists as he sits in front of copies of a German translation of his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century at the Economy Ministry in Berlin on Nov. 7, 2014.

Nothing else dominated the economics conversation in 2014 quite like Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty’s best-selling opus on the past, present, and future of wealth and inequality. So with the end of the year approaching, I emailed the professor to ask how he felt about the reaction to his book—which argues that unchecked capitalism will lead to a worsening wealth gap and the return of dynastic fortunes—now that some months have passed since the initial burst of enthusiasm that made it an unexpected hit.

“In my view,” Piketty wrote back, “one of the most interesting and positive impacts of the book is that [it] induced a number of governments to open their fiscal files, particularly in Latin America and Asia. So right now I am very busy with the extension of our World Top Incomes Database to more and more emerging countries.” He elaborated a bit, but that was the gist. The commotion over Capital has created new opportunities for Piketty to study how much of the world’s money is flowing to its rich, and to put the information online for all to access. Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan, and South Korea have all handed him the keys to their tax records. And that makes the man excited.

To be honest, the response was a little dryer than I hoped. (A jab at his critics surely would have spiced this story up.) But it also underscored something important: In a crucial sense, Piketty’s view of the world is winning. Other economists may have yet to fully embrace his theories about the natural dynamics of capitalism. But the debate about inequality is now firmly taking place on the Frenchman’s terms. From foreign governments to fellow academics, everybody wants answers to the questions Piketty is asking.

Even before Capital became a phenomenon, Piketty was one of the people most responsible for the way we talk about inequality today. After all, he and his collaborators, including University of California–Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, had pioneered the tax-data analysis that shed light on the incomes of the top 1 percent and gave Occupy Wall Street its stickiest slogans.