The Inequality In Thomas Pikety's Capital In The Twenty-First Century

Thomas Piketty’s recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, charts the distribution of wealth over time, within and across countries. His contribution to our understanding of wealth and wealth inequality has rekindled a debate about societal and global inequality and the role of international institutions not seen since the early days of the United Nations. In light of the 2008 global recession, recovery, and national efforts addressing the economic organization of society, Piketty’s research is especially timely.
The widening gap between wealthy elites and the broader public that Piketty identifies, as well as the ability of elites to shield their wealth from taxation, raise economic, moral, and political questions that must be
Any solution addressing the increasing concentrations of wealth will necessarily have to traverse mires of human values and morality on stilts of laws and political
To accomplish this review, I will bring together disparate literatures on the economics of tax havens, the legal history of international taxation, and the research on the politics underlying treaty and customary laws. Even after laying aside this philosophical question of justice, the problem Piketty identifies poses a challenge to disciplines beyond economics, a reality Piketty himself notes when tracing his book’s