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economist Thomas Piketty of France
 | short profile |
"I don't have a strong identity as an economist. I view my work as [being] more of a social scientist."
"Education is a key driver of economic prosperity, and also of economic inequality."
"All wealth creation is collective in nature."
"The history of the world has been the history of the class struggle, according to Karl Marx, and what I suggest (at the end of my book)
as a change is to view the history of the world as a history of ideological struggle."
"I am now convinced that we must reflect on a new overcoming of [hyper-]capitalism, a new form of socialism,
participatory and decentralized, federal and democratic, ecological, mixed, and feminist."
— Thomas Piketty
B I O
t e x t
h e r e
Thomas Piketty faculty page at Paris School of Economics
Thomas Piketty entry at Wikipedia
Thomas Piketty credits listing {since 2003} at Internet Movie Database
browse {mostly French} books at the Thomas Piketty Store {returns 70+ titles} at Amazon
Thomas Piketty's official Facebook page
Past & Present Positions
1993-1995: assistant professor at M.I.T. Economics Department
1995-2000: research fellow at C.N.R.S. in Paris, France
2000: Visiting Professor at M.I.T. Economics Department
2000-present: professor (directeur d'études) at E.H.E.S.S. in Paris, France
2002-2013: co-director of the Public Policy Programme at C.E.P.R. in London, England
2004-2006: director of the Department of Social Sciences at E.N.S.
2005-2007: director of the Paris School of Economics in Paris, France
2007-present: professor at the Paris School of Economics in Paris, France
Thomas Piketty faculty page at Paris School of Economics
2015-2016 : Visiting Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics (part-time visiting position)
Thomas Piketty is also co-director of the World Inequality Lab and the World Inequality Database at the Paris School of Economics
World Inequality Lab [est. circa 2015]
World Inequality Database [est. 2011, renamed 2014]
 | "World Inequality Report 2018" [2018] Edited by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman
Kindle Edition from Harvard Univ Press [5/2018] for $18.19 Harvard/Belknap Press pb [7/2018] for $7.47 "Die Weltweite Ungleichheit" German edition C.H. Beck Verlag 8½x5½ pb [7/2018] for $30.13 |
 | "World Inequality Report 2022" [2022]  Edited by Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman Harvard Univ Press pb [DUE Oct 2022] for $35.00 |
Major Works
browse books at the Thomas Piketty Store {returns 80+ titles} at Amazon
$ $
 | "The Economics of Inequality" [French 1997, English 2015] by Thomas Piketty, Translation by Arthur Goldhammer First published in French in 1997, updated several times; this is the first English publication Kindle Edition from Harvard Univ Press [8/2015] for $14.16 Harvard/Belknap Press 8½x5¾ hardcover [8/2015] for $18.99 |
$ $
"Capital In The Twenty-First Century"
[French Sept 2013, English March 2014]
by Thomas Piketty, Translation by Arthur Goldhammer
"Thomas Piketty's 'Capital' In 3 Minutes" [April 2014] from B.B.C. Newsnight
watch 3/2014 short animated video [3:14] online at YouTube
"New Thoughts On Capital In The Twenty-First Century" talk [June 2014] at TEDsalon in Berlin, Germany
watch full video of 6/2014 Picketty TEDtalk [21:00]
 | "Piketty's Capital: Wrong Theory, Destructive Program" [2014] by George Reisman Reisman is a prolific writer of pro-fascist, pro-libertarian essays & ebooks, all of which are nonsense 65-page Kindle Edition from T.J.S. Books [7/2014] for 99¢ |
 | "Piketty på 1-2-3 (Piketty In 1-2-3) - Capital In The Twenty-First Century, Drawn and Explained" [Norway 2014] Adapted & Illustrated by Esben Slaatrem Titland published by Forlaget Manifest of Oslo, Norway - retail source not found (2021) |
 | "Problems With Piketty: The Flaws and Fallacies in Capital In The Twenty-First Century" [2014] by Dr. Mark Hendrickson here's a clue about the contents being wrong-headed: the book is admired by both Ron Paul and Arthur Laffer; also, the publisher changed their name to The Institute for Faith and Freedom in 2019 104-page Kindle Edition from The Center for Vision & Values [11/2014] for $3.99 102-page The Center for Vision & Values 8½x5½ pb [11/2014] for $10.00 |
"Thomas Piketty "Capital In The 21st Century" March 2015 Storrs Lecture at Yale Law School
watch full 3/2015 lecture [1:10:03] online at YouTube
"Capital In The 21st Century with Thomas Piketty - Helen Edison Lecture Series" [10/2015] at U.C. San Diego
conversation between Piketty and Peter Gourevitch, founding dean of U.C. San Diego’s School of Global Policy & Strategy,
on what rising income inequality means for society • [11/2015 upload; 58:42] on YouTube
 | "The Contradictions of Capital In The Twenty-First Century: The Piketty Opportunity" [2016] Edited by Prof. Pat Hudson & Dr. Keith Tribe
17 essays by expert contributors including both editors and Joseph E. Stiglitz Kindle Edition from Agenda Publng [10/2016] for $28.50 {sic} Agenda Publng 9¼x6 pb [1/2017] for $34.74 Agenda Publng 9¼x6¼ hardcover [1/2017] for $95.00 {sic} |
 | "Anti-Piketty: Capital For The 21st-Century" [2017] Edited by tax lawyer Jean-Philippe Delsol, author Nicolas Lecaussin & economist Emmanuel Martin; Preface by libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron Book is obviously wrong-headed since the publisher is right-wing 'think tank' Cato Institute Kindle Edition from Cato Institute [3/2017] for $12.99 - not currently available {rights issues?} Cato Institute 8x5½ pb [3/2017] for $18.95 |
 | "An Introduction To Thomas Piketty's Capital In The 21st Century (A Macat Economics Analysis)" [2015] by Nick Broten PhD, assistant policy analyst at RAND short analysis of how Piketty applies his understanding of the data to answering the deeply important question of what political structures and what policies are necessary to move us towards a more equal society, and how Piketty provides detailed and sustained explanations of why he sees existing arguments relating to income and wealth distribution as flawed; Piketty does this thru very detailed evaluations of the significance of a vast amount of data explaining why incomes are distributed in the way that they are 111-page Kindle Edition from Macat Library [7/2017] for $8.50 114-page Macat Library 7¾x5 pb [8/2017] for $8.95 114-page Macat Library 8x5¼ hardcover [7/2017] for $34.10 watch 4/2015 short promo [3:27] online at YouTube animated video specifies Piketty's Central Contradiction of Capitalism: The difference in interest between R (rate of return) and G (rate of economic growth) will lead to widening inequality over time |
 | "Capital In The Twenty-First Century" documentary feature [General Film Corp. April 2020] an eye-opening journey through wealth and power that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities • 103-minute documentary feature co-produced & co-written by Matthew Metcalfe; co-written & directed by Justin Pemberton; co-written by Thomas Piketty, based on his book; featuring 'rock-star' economist Thomas Piketty, Kate Williams, Gillian Tett (U.S. Editor, The Financial Times), Francis Fukuyama, Paul Mason, Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University), Ian Bremmer, Faiza Sha-heen, Bryce Edwards, Paul Piff (U.C. Berkeley), Simon Johnson, Gabriel Zucman (U.C. Berkeley), Suresh Naidu (Columbia University), Lucas Chancel, Rana Foroohar (The Financial Times); with archive footage of George W. Bush, Michael Douglas {as Gordon Gekko}, Daniel Huttlestone, Ronald Reagan, Vanessa Redgrave, and Margaret Thatcher; extras on Blu-ray include interviews, trailer, panel at The New Republic Roundtable {see just below} full credits at IMDb • distributor movie page watch 2/2020 official trailer [1:43] online at YouTube Kino Lorber color Blu-ray [8/2020] for $14.77 Kino Lorber color DVD [8/2020] for $11.99 French-language Diaphana color DVD [8/2020] for $54.99 |
"T.N.R. Live: A Roundtable Discussion On Piketty’s Capital In The Twenty-First Century" [6/2020]
moderated by Chris Lehmann; featuring Thomas Piketty, with Ian Bremmer & Gillian Tett
watch full 6/2020 podcast [1:06:55] online at YouTube
$ $
 | "Capital and Ideology" international best-seller [2020] by Thomas Piketty, Translation by Arthur Goldhammer 1,100-page book challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history by exposing the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, revealing why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlining the structure of a fairer economic system Kindle Edition from Harvard Univ Press [3/2020] for $23.99 {sic} Harvard/Belknap Press 9¼x6½ hardcover [3/2020] for $28.23 |
"Capital and Ideology: Thomas Piketty" interview at U.N.S.W. Sydney, Australia
watch full 3/2021 interview [1:02:14] online at YouTube
book & interview describe the two pillars of Piketty's participatory socialism
1) 50% minus 1 of voting rights on company boards be given to representatives elected by workers, with no ownership
of stock shares; 2) redistribution of wealth itself, mostly thru taxation on the very wealthy
$ $
 | "Une Brève Histoire de L’Égalité (A Brief History of Equality)" [2021] "Economic issues are too important to be left to a small class of specialists and leaders. The citizen reappropriation of this knowledge is an essential step in transforming power relations." ~~~ Thomas Piketty French-language Kindle Edition from Editions du Seuil [8/2021] for $11.99 French-language Editions du Seuil 7½x5¼ pb [8/2021] for $42.00 |
 | "A Brief History of Equality" [2022] by Thomas Piketty A short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. 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; he shows that over time human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial & gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship Kindle Edition from Belknap Press [4/2022] for $9.78 Harvard Univ Belknap Press 8¼x5½ hardcover [4/2022] for $21.99 |
Other Works
 | "Why Save The Bankers?: And Other Essays On Our Economic and Political Crisis" [2016] by Thomas Piketty, Translation by Seth Ackerman a collection of his newspaper columns from between the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris Kindle Edition from Mariner Books [4/2016] for $11.99 Mariner Books 8x5¼ pb [4/2017] for $15.99 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 8¼x5½ hardcover [4/2016] for $7.62 |
 | "Chronicles: On Our Political and Economic Crisis" [2016] by Thomas Piketty alternate title: "Chronicles: On Our Troubled Times" a collection of the very best of Piketty's writing for daily "Libération" over the past ten years, translated into English for the first time Viking 8½x5¼ pb [5/2016] out of print/used Viking 8¾x5¾ hardcover [5/2016] out of print/50+ used Viking hardcover [5/2016] out of print/used |
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"After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality" [2017] Edited by by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong & Marshall Steinbaum An ambitious and refreshingly frank conversation . . . an extraordinary gathering of two dozen authors working across disciplinary boundaries that interrogates Piketty’s core claims about the causes, correlates, characteristics, and consequences of high & rising levels of income & wealth inequality in the West; the gathered authors celebrate and hone Piketty’s far-reaching contributions - they also tackle substantial weaknesses and assess omissions Kindle Edition from Harvard Univ Press [5/2017] for $9.99 Harvard Univ Press 8¾x5¾ pb [2/2019] for $19.95 Harvard Univ Press 9½x6½ hardcover [5/2017] for $28.32 |
 | "Vivement Le Socialisme!: Chroniques, 2016-2020 (Bring On Socialism! Chronicles)" [2020] by Thomas Piketty A collection of 59 essays written for the French newspaper Le Monde from 2016 to July 2020 Kindle Edition from Editions du Seuil [10/2020] for $17.99 Editions du Seuil 8¾x5¾ pb [10/2020] for $0.00 |
 | "Time For Socialism: Dispatches From A World On Fire, 2016-2021" [2021] by Thomas Piketty, Translation by Kristin Couper A slightly different collection of 58 essays written for the French newspaper Le Monde from 2016 to 2021; prefaced by an extended introductory essay in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology Kindle Edition from Yale Univ Press [10/2021] for $11.99 Yale Univ Press 8¾x5¾ hardcover [10/2021] for $25.00 |
|
"If I had been told in 1990 that I would publish in 2020 a collection of columns entitled "Vive le Socialisme!", I would have thought [that] it was a bad joke. At the age of eighteen, I had just spent the autumn of 1989 listening on the radio to the collapse of communist dictatorships and 'real socialism' in Eastern Europe. "But here it is: thirty years later, in 2020, hyper-capitalism has gone far too far, and I am now convinced that we must reflect on a new overcoming of capitalism, a new form of socialism, participatory and decentralized, federal and democratic, ecological, mixed and feminist. "History will decide whether the word 'socialism' is definitely dead and needs to be replaced. For my part, I think that it can be saved, and even that it remains the most appropriate term for the idea of an alternative economic system to capitalism. In any case, we cannot be content to be 'against' capitalism or neo-liberalism: we must also and above all be 'for' something else, which requires [us] to designate precisely the ideal economic system that we wish to put in [its] place, the just society that we have in mind, whatever the name we finally decide to give it. It has become common to say that the current capitalist system has no future, as it widens inequalities and exhausts the planet. This is not wrong, except that in the absence of a clearly explained alternative, the current system still has many days ahead of it." |
Movies & Television, Other Media
Thomas Piketty credits listing {since 2003} at Internet Movie Database
"Capitalism: A Six-Part Series" documentary [Icarus Films Oct 2014]
 | Filmed in 22 countries; 'ambitious & accessible' documentary series that looks at both the history of ideas and the social forces that have shaped the capitalist world • Co-creator Bruno Nahon; co-creator & director Ilan Ziv; featuring host? Robert Boyer, Michael Hudson, Thomas Piketty {episodes 3 thru 6}, David Graeber, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Robert Skidelsky, Ha-Joon Chang, Ho Fung Hung, Yuval Noah Harari, David Harvey, Philippe Norel, Nicholas Phillipson, Abraham Rotstein, Yanis Varoufakis, Noam Chomsky {episode 2 only}, James K. Galbraith {episode 5 only} •
series credits at IMDb
Icarus Films color DVD [5/2018] for $23.99 Episode 1: "The Birth of The Free Market" • episode credits at IMDb Episode 2: "The Wealth of Nations" with • episode credits Episode 3: "Ricardo and Malthus, Did Someone Say Freedom?" • episode credits Episode 4: "What If Marx Was Right?" • episode credits Episode 5: "Keynes vs. Hayek, A Fake Debate?" • episode credits Episode 6: "Karl Polanyi, The Human Factor" • episode credits watch 9/2015 official trailer [2:06] online at YouTube |
"Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz
with Alex Wagner: The Genius of Economics" [live March 2015]
 | 75-minute panel event at the "7 Days of Genius" Conference at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, co-sponsored by MSNBC • DVD/Blu-ray not available • not listed at IMDb Amazon Instant Video [2015] HD or SD rental or purchase for 99¢ watch full 3/2015 panel event [1:15:38] online at YouTube visit the "7 Days of Genius" Channel at YouTube |
"The Great European Disaster Movie" political TV documentary
[ARTE/BBC-TV March 2015]
 | Begins with a dystopian premise - a conversation inside a passenger aircraft above Europe - and then explains why that future is likely . . . • Co-produced, written & directed by Annalisa Piras; featuring Geert Mak, Martin Wolf, Bernard Guetta, Philippe Legrain, Felipe González, Bill Emmott, Anna Diamantapoulou, Peter Mandelson, Pablo Iglesias, Alexis Tsipras, Thomas Piketty, Élisabeth Guigou; and dramatic actors: Angus Deayton, Flavia Piras Trow, John Arthur, Neerja Naik, Peter Salmon, Kornelia Horvath, Martyn Mayger, Shaun Newnham, Mike T. Smith; with archive footage of:
Winston Churchill, British politician Nigel Farage, Helmut Kohl (Chancellor of Germany 1982-98), Marine Le Pen, Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany 2005-2021), François Mitterrand (President of France, 1981-95) •
full credits at IMDb •
official producer website
DVD/Blu-ray not available • Amazon Instant Video [2015] HD rental $1.99, HD purchase $4.99 watch full movie [5/2020 upload; 1:27:44] online at YouTube |
"De Fractie" 30-episode TV series [Netherlands VPRO-TV Jan 2015-Aug 2016]
Season 1, Episode 2 "#jaloezietax" [Jan 2015] directed by Remy van Heugten, featuring Thomas Piketty
series credits at IMDb •
episode credits at IMDb
episode homepage at "TV Maze" website
"Economics & Beyond with Rob Johnson: Interview of Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics, Paris School of Economics"
watch the full 6/2022 podcast [1:05:12] online
Works About Thomas Piketty
 | "Thomas Piketty and The Crisis of Neoclassical Economics" [Nov 2014] by John Bellamy Foster & Michael D. Yates read the full article online |
cover article "The Liberty Magazine" April 2015 (no info found 10/2021)
cover article "Newsweek Magazine" 24 February 2015 (no info found 10/2021)
listed among TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential in April 2015
Thomas Piketty’s "Capital In The Twenty-First Century" . . . forced an international focus on income and wealth inequality.
short Piketty article on the TIME Magazine website
March 2020 article in The New Yorker Magazine by Idrees Kahloon, Washington correspondent for The Economist
"Now that celebrity economist [Thomas Piketty]’s boldest ideas have been adopted by mainstream politicians, he has
an even more provocative vision for transcending capitalism and overcoming our 'inequality regime'."
read the full article, headlined "The Leveller"
Image Gallery
Friends & Family
Thomas Piketty was born in May 1971 in Clichy, France; his 2013-2014 book "Capital In The Twenty-First Century"
was an international bestseller and also achieved #1 top seller status on Amazon.com.
partner politician Aurélie Filippetti [b. 1973]
In 2009, she filed a complaint of domestic violence against Piketty; he was arrested and acknowledged
the complaint and apologized, following which she withdrew the complaint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aur%C3%A9lie_Filippetti
wife & fellow economist Julia Cagé [b. 1984] - married 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Cag%C3%A9
Colleagues
Facundo Alvaredo
Lucas Chancel
Emmanuel Saez
Gabriel Zucman
L i n k s
Thomas Piketty faculty page at Paris School of Economics
Thomas Piketty entry at Wikipedia
Thomas Piketty credits listing {since 2003} at Internet Movie Database
browse {mostly French} books at the Thomas Piketty Store {returns 80+ titles} at Amazon
Thomas Piketty's official Facebook page
here on the economist Thomas Piketty Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore
top of page •• short profile •• major works •• other works •• movies & TV, other media ••
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