Page 75 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 1 Issue 1 Q4

Piketty: Profile of an Economic Imperialist
BY KATHERINE HOWELL
In 2015, French economist omas Piketty came to South Africa and spoke at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus to over two thousand enamoured students, dignitaries, top-ranking ANC
o cials and some of the wealthiest elite in South Africa. Despite the fact that South Africa was not one of the twenty countries covered in his body of work, Piketty argued that land redistribution, a minimum wage, and tax on the wealth of individuals rather than just their income, would contribute toward a more equal society in South Africa. Piketty left with an honorary doctoral degree in Economics – Philosophiae Doctor (Honoris Causa) – from the University of Johannesburg and a growing fanbase. It remains to be seen, however, whether Piketty’s thesis actually holds true in a South African context.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty’s overnight sensation, took the world by storm and sets the tone of the debate on the skyrocketing incomes of the 1 percent and the exorbitant gains of the 0.1 percent and 0.01 percent. Central to the book’s theme is the underlying concept that laissez-faire capitalism is no longer working, and that state intervention is required. e book integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labour and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals.
Using more than two hundred years of data, particularly from America and Europe, Piketty and other economists detail historical changes in the concentration of income and wealth. He demonstrates the evolution of inequality, from the pre-industrial revolution all the way to today’s digital age.
One only has to think of Marie Antoinette to get a feeling of the extreme inequality in the 18th century – where private wealth overshadowed
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