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.

What was the good of industrial development, what was the good of all the technological innovations, toil, and population movements if, after half a century of industrial growth, the condition of the masses was still just as miserable as before, and all lawmakers could do was prohibit factory labor by children under the age of eight?

The principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge.

It's not Utopian to believe that we can create a global registry of financial assets so we know who owns what in different countries.

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

When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.