Thomas Piketty’s well-known work on the historical forces underlying socio-economic inequality spawned intense debates over the last few years. The French economist compared long histories of tax data in a range of countries and argues that – in the long run – the return on capital wins out over the return on labour. And for that reason the rich get richer and the poor (comparatively) poorer. Our discussions in Week 11 touch on these issues. Most of Piketty’s work deals with Western countries, but if this historical trend of increased inequality is driven by the fundamental laws of economics, one would expect the general pattern to rear its head in other parts of the world as well. On the other hand, history never quite repeats itself and presumably contextual variance (different – colonial – histories, societies, geographies, a different phase in the history of globalisation etc.) will make a difference. In Piketty’s book, some of the later chapters explore this question to some extent.
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