capital in the twenty first century by thomas piketty

A new factory could make you far richer than rent on a vast estate and if you lived in certain parts of the world, slaves were more useful than real estate as collateral for borrowing money. Then as now, rom-coms sold their audiences fantasies sure to leave them disappointed as adults: In Austen’s case, the idea that being fun and witty might cause an aristocrat to propose marriage - when in truth, the rich married strategically to cement their own positions.ĭuring the Industrial Revolution, capital was not so land-based. We start with Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, where Columbia University’s Suresh Naidu explains that, in the 18th century, capital was mostly about moneylending and land-owning. But it leaves one wishing for a longer-form project that would bolster arguments for harnessing the “wild horse” of unrestrained capitalism and explore ways redistribution of wealth might be sold to citizens trained by the rich to fear any hint of socialism.Īs the doc’s tremendous fondness for clips from old movies reminds us, novels and films have been teaching us much this history all our lives. The film’s timing is fortuitous, as a worldwide calamity might conceivably make governments more receptive to Piketty’s proposals for redistribution and reform.

One or two episodes make especially good use of this medium, and smart interviewees often condense insights into especially sharp soundbites. For the rest of us, Capital is mostly a tour down memory lane, a reminder of how one system of wealth-accumulation evolved into another and so on over the years.

Capital in the twenty first century by thomas piketty