Iuri Colares

“South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East stand at the frontier of modern inequality, with top decile shares of 55–65 percent.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology

“Between 1880 and 1914 the world was in perpetual flux. The automobile, the electric light, the trans-Atlantic steamship, the telegraph, and radio—all were invented in the space of a few decades. The economic and social consequences of those inventions were surely as important as those of Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. The point is crucial, because it shows that the hyper-inegalitarianism of the prewar era was not a consequence of a bygone era with little or no similarity to today’s world. In fact, the Belle Époque resembles today’s world in many ways, even if essential differences remain.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology

“But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that “the most important factor” in rising inequality “is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education.” That’s a fundamental misreading of what’s happening to American society. What we’re seeing isn’t the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we’re seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.”
― Paul Krugman, Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

“At this stage, I will simply insist on a conclusion we have encountered before: namely, that it is impossible to understand the structure of inequality today without taking into account the heavy inegalitarian legacy of slavery and colonialism.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology