Editor’s note: If you missed the live stream you can now watch the full event above, courtesy of CUNY TV.
Is inequality an unavoidable byproduct of capitalism? That’s the question at the heart of a new book by French economist Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which The Nation’s Timothy Shenk argues “stands a fair chance of becoming the most influential work of economics yet published in our young century.” Relying on an extensive well of data collected over a decade, Piketty asserts that there is no reason for market-based economies to inherently tend toward equality—quite the opposite, in fact. And if drastic action isn’t taken, we will continue the slide toward a world of increasingly separated haves and have-nots.
On April 16 at 6pm EST, watch Piketty join Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University), Paul Krugman (Princeton University) and Steven Durlauf (University of Wisconsin–Madison) in conversation at a landmark event organized by the Graduate Center, CUNY. The event will be introduced and moderated by Janet Gornick and Branko Milanovic (Graduate Center, Luxembourg Income Study Center). The event is co-sponsored by the Luxembourg Income Study Center and the Advanced Research Collaborative.
For more on Piketty’s book, read Shenk’s article in this week’s issue of The Nation, “Thomas Piketty and Millennial Marxists on the Scourge of Inequality.”
