Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.

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.

There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they 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.

Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.