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Thomas Piketty got a lot of attention, both good and bad, for his latest book. If you’ve never read it (admittedly, I have not either), the central idea is that, in capitalist economies, wealth will naturally concentrate in the hands of a few people because the return on capital investments typically exceeds standard economic growth. Because visuals are always good, here’s one of the many charts he uses in making his point:
As you can see there, in 1800s France the top 1 percent of inherited wealth had about 19 times more (in terms of multiple of average income) than the top 1 percent of labor earners. That evened out right after WW2, but now we’re going back to a place where the inherited wealth is doubling the earned wealth, essentially. (And that will probably rise.)
Now there’s a new study on “Surnames and Social Mobility in England, 1170–2012”, summarized here, that looks at 28 whole generations of British life and finds that many of the top surnames — Darcy, Percy, Talbot, etc. — have been at the top of that society for roughly the entire time.
The money quote on that paper?
