Capital in the Twenty-First Century. By THOMAS PIKETTY

Abstract

There are many excellent reviews and much commentary on Piketty’s powerful new study.1 This review seeks to put his principal global economic policy recommendation—a global wealth tax—into the larger context of ongoing debates within both political philosophy and international economic law on appropriate and effective responses to global inequality.2 Piketty observes in the opening lines of his chapter on a global wealth tax that if one is concerned about regulating a globalized form of patrimonial capitalism (capital accumulation through inheritance rather than innovation or entrepreneurship), it is not enough to use 20th-century tools—society must invent new ones. This trenchant observation summarizes both the essence of Piketty’s approach to global fiscal policy, and the focus of this review. Piketty’s approach may be new and his conclusions powerful and disturbing, but a global taxation scheme in response to inequality is not itself entirely new—which is very good news. From the perspective of international economic law and policy, Piketty’s chief contributions in this magisterial new book are to strengthen and reinvigorate the arguments in favor of a tax-based response to inequality, a key factor where the politics promise to continue to be quite difficult; and to enrich both the range of options and the number of strategies available to global tax advocates and anyone seeking, as he puts it, to reassert democratic control over capitalism.