Harvard University Press
A Brief History of Equality
Key Metrics
- Thomas Piketty
- Harvard University Press
- Audio
- 9798212006583
- -
- -
- Social Science > Social Classes & Economic Disparity
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding, a perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.
It is easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality.
Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship.
Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people.
We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.
Author Bio
Thomas Piketty is Professor at EHESS and at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of research articles published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, Explorations in Economic History, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales.
He has done historical and theoretical work on the interplay between economic development, the distribution of income and wealth, and political conflict.These works have led to emphasize the role of political, social and fiscal institutions in the historical evolution of income and wealth distribution.
Thomas Piketty is also co-director of the World Inequality Lab and the World Inequality Database, and one of initiators of the Manifesto for the democratization of Europe. He is the author of the international best-sellers Capital in the 21st century (2014) and Capital and ideology (2020).
Source: Paris School of Economics
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