Piketty Analysis Of Wealth

According to recent polls, the highest earning fourth of families in the US earned around 60% of all income, while the wealthiest in the world earned about 90% of all global wealth. Such a big gap between the rich and the poor is often associated to various reasons ranging from social mobility and life expectancy to transitions in the global economy and current political phenomenons; such as global terrorism, arguably taken into consideration. Piketty, highlights this phenomenon in his seventh chapter, titled, “Inequality and Concentration: Preliminary Bearings” . In this chapter, he puts emphasis on micro-phenomenon of income split through the transition from collective economic level to that of ‘individual level” (Piketty 237). As such, Piketty

The first one, titled, “hyper patrimonial society”(Piketty 247), highlights the generic method of wealth accumulation, usually dominated by unequal societies. The second method of wealth accumulation, which Piketty notes as, “hyper meritocratic society”, highlights the peak of income hierarchy dominated by a very high income of labor rather than inherited wealth.(Piketty 265). Ironically, Piketty, himself, criticizes the truly “ meritocratic” nation of such a society and extends to the idea of a world with super managers being more adequate. Such form of society, recently emerged in the US, is , according to Piketty, “the peak of the income hierarchy dominated by very high incomes from labor rather than by inherited wealth” ( Piketty 265). As a result, such form of wealth accumulation is not necessarily binded to an industrial corporation rather income is, often, generated within the spectres of financial enterprises, much like the motto of

Milanovic does agree with Piketty when it comes to the dramatic shift from extreme levels of economic disparity in the 20th century. Furthermore, he details the methods of reduction for global inequality by providing three alternatives; fastened growth in third world countries, ‘global redistributive schemes’(Milanovic, 427), and, ofcourse, migration.

Taking such phenomenons into consideration, Milanovic concludes that the Rich world is fencing itself in, or fencing others out.(Milanovic 427). However, the pressures of current phenomenons, such as migration, might disrupt the process, since income levels are pretty high.

In Conclusion, Reducing global inequality is by no means an easy task. Several options and alternatives have been proposed by both Piketty and Milanovic. While Piketty focuses on the economic aspect, he fails to provide elaboration over the political side of the issue.Milanovic, on the other, does recognize politics. One thing is for certain, if these challenges continue to go unaddressed, they are likely to reinforce the future’s level of economic