Thomas Piketty Quotes

The world has also learned that economic growth, by itself, cannot close the gap between rich and poor.

The inequality between the world's individuals is staggering.

Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth?

There is an increase in inequality in the early stages of development.

You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.

Wealth inequality has increased.

If consumers don't have the wherewithal to spend because all the money's going to the top, and the people at the top only spend a very small fraction of what they earn, then the economy is almost inevitably destined to slow.

Regardless of how you interpret the facts, you have to come to the conclusion that inequality is widening in the US and in almost every other country.

It's important to realize that innovation and growth in itself are not sufficient to moderate inequality of wealth.

There are many countries in the world that when they reached the middle-income stage, they witnessed serious structural problems such as growth stagnation, a widening wealth gap and increasing social unrest.

Inequalities of wealth lead to a dispersion in wealth for all.

When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.

You need some inequality to grow... but extreme inequality is not only useless but can be harmful to growth because it reduces mobility and can lead to political capture of our democratic institutions.

Research suggests that large divisions of income and wealth weaken demand and generate economic imbalances that create instability and undermine growth.

Inequality doesn't create unhappiness.

Rising inequality is toxic to growth. High levels of inequality exclude people - both as innovators and customers - diminishing both innovation and demand.

In financial terms, my sense is that the distribution of wealth, unequal as it is, is self-perpetuating, and, especially in a linked and accelerating world, the rich get ever more quickly richer while the poor get ever more speedily poorer.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

When wealth is centralized, the people are dispersed. When wealth is distributed, the people are united.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

There’s just too much money in the hands of too few.

Latin America was born with a birth defect: a highly unequal initial distribution of resources that dates back to the colonial era.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

Equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists… we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already”