At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.

I certainly agree that capital is not a one-dimensional object, and that the return on capital takes very different forms for different assets or different people.

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.

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.

The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.

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.

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