Why Does Inequality Matter? Reflections on the Political Morality of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century
19 Pages Posted: 12 May 2016 Last revised: 7 Jun 2016
Date Written: May 1, 2016
Abstract
In the Conclusion to Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty issues a call for a political and historical economics. Like Marx and the political economists before him, Piketty is interested in how markets work because he is interested in the rights and wrongs of institutional, especially legal, design. His is book is guided by a clear sense that economic inequality, especially inequality of wealth, raises serious prima facie problems of social justice. This essay is a critical investigation into the political morality underlying Capital in the Twenty-First Century that unravels and evaluates the different ways in which economic inequality may or may not matter.
Keywords: inequality, Piketty, social justice
JEL Classification: A13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation