Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.
We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics...
The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
In North America, there is no nostalgia for the postwar period, quite simply because the Trente Glorieuses never existed there: per capita output grew at roughly the same rate of 1.5–2 percent per yea...
To be sure, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the intuitive knowledge that everyone acquires about contemporary wealth and income levels, even in the absence of any theoretical...
They (economists) must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
Protectionism does not produce wealth, and free trade and economic openness are ultimately in everyone’s interest
Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinsh...
All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
