There was a lot of interesting stuff in this very short book. But the writing was hard to parse and get into. Would be interesting to read something that explored this stuff in more engaging prose. ( )

I’m not really a Pikety fan in general, but this was a decent basic introduction to standard economics around income redistribution — not the desire for it so much as the costs and benefits of various forms. The big compelling case is that income redistribution by taxing and then subsidizing is superior to minimum wage or other mechanisms, and that issues such as percentage of income going to capital vs labor are nontrivial to modify. I’d probably recommend this book to anyone with at least a basic knowledge of economics who is interested in this question. ( )

339.22

This is briefer and less descriptive or definitive than what I expected. It is strictly an economist’s discussion and poses all in questions. Lots of graphs and statistics which don’t interest me. Learned just a couple of things. Piketty is dialoging about income re-distribution (natural or engineered) and the notion of ‘effiecient’ wage inequalities. He also seems to be challenging the capital/labor equation. I think he is trying to re-define labor as a type of capital. ( )

A discussion of the difficulties of measuring economic inequality and the difficulties of reducing EI in practice. For the 'Professor Gruber' in us all. Not for a beginning economics student. ( )