> Pickety's argument amounts to (IMO) that this is the mature state of our current system. Capital generally grows faster than labour and (if it isn't spent), a

> Pickety's argument amounts to (IMO) that this is the mature state of our current system. Capital generally grows faster than labour and (if it isn't spent), accumulates over time. From the article: > Then there’s the idea that landowners, not corporate overlords, are taking money away from workers. While analyzing the work of French economist Thomas Piketty, Matt Rognlie found that national income accounts showed an increasing amount flowing to owners of land. It's worth noting that in Rognlie's analysis, once we take away the effects of land, the return to capital ceases to outpace production. Anyway, as far as explaining the non-productive forms of capital we have so much of today―I'd simply conclude that they're not capital at all... Henry George's definition of capital, for instance, excludes them―he made a (IMO very neat) distinction between "Value from Production" and "Value from Obligation"[0] that is a very useful way for considering things. In time, things like "GDP" cease to seem very accurate or meaningful. [0] http://schalkenbach.org/henry-george/science-of-political-economy/spe214.html http://schalkenbach.org/henry-george/science-of-political-ec...