French economist Thomas Piketty is back with a 1,200-page guide to abolishing billionaires, according to a recent article inBloomberg.
The article reports that his latest blockbuster, “Capital and Ideology” explains how governments should address inequality—”by upending capitalism.” The tome is a sequel to “Capital in the 21st Century,” which the article says has sold more than 2.5 million copies in 40 languages since 2013.
“Six years on, there are more politicians pledging to redress the skewed distribution of income and wealth,” the article contends, citing U.S. presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren as among them.
In an interview with the French magazine L’Obs, Piketty said, “The time has come to exit this phase of making property sacred, to go beyond capitalism.” According to the article, the author says his “conclusion is that it’s a mistake to see inequality as rooted in nature or driven by changes in technology. Its real causes are to be found in politics and ideology—and that makes it easier to challenge.” But the fixes suggested in the book, the article says, would involve “dramatic upheaval for the world’s developed economies.”
The new book argues, for example, that no shareholder should control more than 10% of voting rights at a company and advocates a wealth tax to “enshrine the idea that ownership of property above a certain value can only be ‘temporary’.”
Piketty told L’Obs, “The system I propose makes it possible to own several million euros, or even tens of millions, at least for a while. But those with several hundred million euros, or several billion, will have to share power.”