From the physical means of production of Ricardo's theories to the critique of political economy by Karl Marx. Economic history has told us about capital in different ways and in different forms. But today, in the twenty-first century, what is capital? “I have tried to describe the multiple dimensions that the concept of capital has taken on in the economy, also including forms of particular capital such as slavery for example. And I've tried to shift the focus from income inequality to wealth inequality." Thomas Piketty, a forty-year-old French economist and author of the essay of the moment "Capital in the XNUMXst century" will speak from the Bocconi University stage on Wednesday, in which he foreshadows the return of the XNUMXth-century patrimonial society like that of Balzac's novels. Not a meeting between researchers and adepts but a "worldly" event that brought together in the same room young students, professors, intellectuals and simple "fans" who, at the end of the conference, lined up with books in hand to get an autograph.
Piketty as an economics rock star and Bocconi as the Assago Forum: queues before the gates open, hunting for the last available seats, many standing, and many left outside the great hall which was not enough to welcome everyone. so much so that for those who didn't make it, a video link was set up from another classroom of the Milanese university.
"What I have tried to communicate with this book - said Piketty who is continuing his tour of Italy after Bocconi between conferences and television appearances - is a story of wealth and distribution accessible to all, I think this theme is too important to be left only to economists and politicians. It's not just about money, it's about the consequences on people's lives. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the democratization of wealth. The problems of inequality and public debt did not start yesterday, and there is much to be learned by putting them in historical perspective”.
The book, published in France in 2013 and in the USA in February 2014 (in Italy it has just been published by Bompiani), has quickly become a bestseller acclaimed by the cultured critics of economists, including the Nobel Krugman, and at the same time ended up on the bedside table of many non-adepts: in a few weeks it jumped to the top of the New York Times best-selling books. Not an easy phamphlet for evening reading but a 950-page tome complete with graphs and tables and, attached, a web address to complete the explanations with other graphic and statistical material. An essay that, as well as in style, has its strength in the breadth of analysis and investigation, the result of years of work by the French economist.
In addition to the method of analysis, Piketty has become a worldwide phenomenon for having brought the issue of inequality and the distribution of wealth back into the spotlight of public debate at a time when never before has it been necessary to find new recipes and new models to return to grow. At the same time, always in Milan, the leaders of European countries met to talk about work. Piketty has a very clear idea about austerity: "It was a disaster" he said, noting that the European Union should have a more compact economic policy, the solution could come in part from a common fiscal policy: 18 different systems today they don't work and they won't work in the future.
For Piketty, who calls for more transparency on incomes and private wealth, those who were born rich or have become so will hardly see their capital shrink, on the contrary they will become increasingly richer because the return on capital is higher than the growth of the real economy (GDP) and income. In other words, the capitalist economic system, the famous market, moves in favor of inequalities. To redistribute this wealth, a taxation would be needed that rates the rich much more than the less wealthy.
In the United States – he explained in his speech at Bocconi – between 1930 and 1980, the marginal tax rate on the highest incomes averaged 82% with peaks exceeding 90% and certainly did not kill the American capitalism, indeed the economic growth of those years was much stronger than from 1980 to today.
