“This is a crisis that illustrates a virulent inequality,” Piketty warns.
Piketty’s research has helped define a debate about the consequences of concentrating so much money and property among so few. His warnings have arrived at a coincidental moment: The coronavirus has suddenly exposed, in real time, the human impact of the seemingly abstract data and charts his research produced.
A central question for Piketty is whether the crisis will prove to be a catalyst that drives policy changes — from paid sick leave to government-provided health care to a reordering of the tax code — that might narrow the wealth gap. Or not. The Trump administration has opposed the use of tax increases on the wealthy to cushion the economic damage to the poor and middle class. The administration has championed tax cuts as a solution to inequality, on the premise that lower taxes will inevitably drive faster growth.
Arguing from the polar opposite view, Piketty puts faith not only in a wealth tax but in adjusting property taxes based on home equity. When he talks about “participatory socialism,” the French economist is not embracing the idea of public ownership but rather “private property for all.” The goal, he says, is to dilute the concentration of real estate in the hands of so few people.
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