Capital in the twenty-first century / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

Tít. original: Le capital au XXIe siècle.

Income and output -- Growth : illusions and realities -- The metamorphoses of capital -- From old Europe to the new world -- The long-run capital/income ratio -- Capital's share vs. labor's share in the twenty-first century -- Inequality and concentration : an initial orientation -- The two worlds -- Inequality in the income from labor -- Inequality in the ownership of capital -- Merit and inheritance in the long run -- Global inequality of wealth in the twenty-first century -- A social state for the twenty-first century -- Rethinking the progressive income tax -- A global tax on capital -- The question of the public debt.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.