ABSTRACT
Piketty sheds light on inequality by telling us original things about how capitalism operates as a system, while also offering surprising and provocative new insights into how markets work. Piketty offers new and disturbing evidence about the relation between capitalism and inequality in the long term with the help of his far-reaching historical data. Piketty tells us that capitalism is as much a social and political system as an economic one, and that markets will act differently in different societies because of varying social values and norms. The magic of the market is that it operates rationally, not through the decisions of a few people with power but rather in response to the voluntary decisions made by millions of producers, workers, and consumers. Piketty raises serious challenges to the reigning theory of capitalist markets, although he does not entertain the core Marxist argument that the market is created by and for powerful elites at the expense of everyone else.
