Thomas Piketty: Nature, Culture, and Inequality.

 

• Published recently in English by Australian publisher Scribe this small, 82 page, beautifully designed hardback is an absolute gem. I’ve read all of Piketty’s tomes over the years but this very digestible book summarises his principle concerns and arguments very clearly. 

• The graphs and tables are in four colour, and are gems in themselves. His main focus is inequality and how nations around the world have progressed over the last century in all sorts of ways, but they’ve mostly gone backwards in the distribution of income and wealth. He also includes a chapter on gender inequality, demonstrating we’ve got a lot more progress to make, and one on the climate change challenge.  

• He makes no bones about the fact he considers himself a socialist. In his view capitalism, on so many levels, is simply not working. He argues for governments to take certain goods and services out of the marketplace, and that ‘it should be extended to larger and larger sectors…the trend to remove whole sectors of the economy from the marketplace is one there’s no going back on’. 

• (Unfortunately Australia and New Zealand (Oceania) don’t feature in any of his ‘world’ tables. It would be so good to get this historical perspective on Australia, and where we sit compared to all other countries.)