When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

No hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest.

Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they dont even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.

I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw some conclusions from it.

Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.

Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.