Just FYI, that's just a theory, and in the decade since his book was published, there have been several rebuttals and refutations pointing out that this theoret

Just FYI, that's just a theory, and in the decade since his book was published, there have been several rebuttals and refutations pointing out that this theoretical mechanism doesn't match the empirical data. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf > Using a sample of 19 advanced economies spanning over 30 years, I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests. Results are robust to several alternative estimates of r-g. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546668 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546668 > Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S. based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper revisits this conclusion by incorporating Social Security retirement benefits into measures of wealth inequality. We find that top wealth shares have not increased in the last three decades when Social Security is properly accounted for. This finding is robust to assumptions about how taxes and benefits may change in response to system financing concerns. Auten & Splinter came out with the most widely accepted[1] rebuttal, which showed that Piketty's theoretical model was based on a reality that ignored major taxes and transfers, and once you account for those, the effect goes away completely. http://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequality.pdf http://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequali... > Top income share estimates based only on individual tax returns, such as Piketty and Saez (2003), are biased by tax-base changes, major social changes, and missing income sources. Addressing these issues requires numerous assumptions, especially for broadening income beyond that reported on tax returns. This paper shows the effects of adjusting for technical tax issues and the sensitivity to alternative assumptions for distributing missing income sources. Our results suggest that top income shares are lower than other tax-based estimates, and since the early 1960s, increasing government transfers and tax progressivity resulted in little change in after-tax top income shares. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/economists-are-rethinking-the-numbers-on-inequality https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/economists-are...