Thomas Piketty

The Covid-19 crisis, the most serious global health crisis in a century, forces us to fundamentally rethink the notion of international solidarity. Beyond the right to produce vaccines and medical equipment, it is the whole question of the right of poor countries to develop and to receive part of the tax revenues of the world’s multinationals and billionaires that must be asked. We need to move beyond the neo-colonial notion of international aid, paid at the whim of rich countries and...

As the trial of George Floyd’s killer opens in the United States, identity conflicts are festering in Europe and France. Instead of fighting discrimination, the government has embarked on a  course of pursuing the far right and hunting down  social scientists. This is all the more regrettable because there is an urgent need to set up a genuine French and European model to combat discrimination. A model which would embrace the reality of racism and ensure the means to measure and correct...

As the pandemic crisis fuels the demand for social justice more than ever, a new investigation by a consortium of international media (including Le Monde) has just revealed the financial turpitudes of Luxembourg, a tax haven nestled in the heart of Europe. There is an urgent need to get out of these contradictions and to launch a profound transformation of the economic system in the direction of justice and redistribution. Let’s start with the most immediate. The first priority should be...

After the invasion of Capitol Hill, the bewildered world wonders how the country that has long presented itself as the self-proclaimed leader of the « free » world could have fallen so low. To understand what has happened, it is urgent to leave the myths and idolatry on one side and to go back to history. In reality, the Republic  of the United States has, since its beginnings, been run through by weaknesses, violence and considerable inequalities. The Confederate flag, the emblem of the...

At a time when religious disputes seem to be flaming up again in France, it is worthwhile considering a question that is not so much material as central: how to finance religions, while ensuring the neutrality of public power with regard to different beliefs? In France, we like to give lessons in secularism to the whole world.  It is not here that a president would take an oath on the Bible!  The problem is that this great national narrative is sometimes accompanied by monumental...

Thanks to the combined efforts of 150 researchers from all continents, the World Inequality Database (WID.world) has just put new data online on the distribution of income in the different countries of the world. What does it tell us about the state of global inequality? The main innovation is that the data collected make it possible to cover almost all countries. Thanks to research carried out in Latin America, Africa and Asia, 173 countries representing 97% of the world’s population are...

How are States going to deal with the accumulation of public debt generated by the Covid crisis? For many, the answer is clear: central banks will take on their balance sheets a growing share of the debts, and everything will be settled. In reality, things are more complex. Money is part of the solution but will not be enough. Sooner or later, the wealthiest will have to be called upon. Let’s recap. In 2020, money creation has taken on unprecedented proportions. The Federal Reserve’s...

In France, as in Germany and most other countries, the left is heavily divided on the European question, and more generally on the strategy to adopt in the face of globalisation and the transnational regulation of capitalism. While national deadlines are fast approaching (2021 in Germany, 2022 in France), many voices are calling for these political forces to unite. In Germany, however, the three main parties (Die Linke, the SPD and the Grünen) are likely to find it difficult to reach...

Can we restore positive meaning to the idea of internationalism? Yes, but on condition that we turn our backs on the ideology of unfettered free trade which has till now guided globalisation and adopt a new model for development based on explicit principles of economic and climatic justice. This model must be internationalist in its final aims but sovereignist in its practical modalities, in the sense that each country, each political community must be able to determine the conditions for...

The wave of mobilisation against racism and racial discrimination poses a crucial question: that of reparations for a past history involving slavery and colonisation. This is an issue which has still not been fully confronted. No matter how complex the question may be, it cannot be eluded for ever, either in the United States or in Europe. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the Republican, Abraham Lincoln promised freed slaves that after the victory they would get “40 acres and a mule”...