Capital In The Twenty-First Century: A Summary

Thomas Piketty is a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) has caused wide concern once publication. In the book, Piketty states that the gap between wealth and poor has widened during the past decades. And he forecasts that the income equality will increase in the future. As the major developed country, the United States also face the reality of the wealth polarization and unequal income distribution. According to the data from the Bureau of Census. In 2006, the income of 10 percent of the richest US population, accounts for the greatest share of national income since the 20th century, which is 48.5%. 1 percent of the richest population accounts for the maximum share …show more content…
When other conditions remain unchanged, if the demand for labor in an industry exceeds the supply, wages will rise. Otherwise, it will be reduced. Over the past 30 years, especially during the 1990s, the science and technology revolution greatly increased the demand for labor skills. An important sigh of the technological progress is the intelligent machines replacing the simple-skilled works. More intelligent machine requires more intelligent people to operate. Thus the demand for high-skilled worker increases, leading to rising wages of high skilled-workers; Intelligent replacing people means that demand for low-skilled workers reduces, resulting in declining wages of low-skilled workers. 100 years ago, Karl Marx had analyzed and forecasted that increased technological construction of the capital composition resulting from science and technology revolution, will replace workers, causing unemployment and impoverishment. Labor costs in the developed countries account for two-thirds of the production and cost of sales. Profit maximization drives enterprises to reduce labor costs and improve labor productivity. Because the unbalanced nature of the labor market, adaptive optimal behavior of enterprises as well as various institutional factors cause wage became rigid; therefore the most effective method of improving labor productivity, reducing labor costs …show more content…
In 2006, the median per capita income of African Americans is equivalent to 58.8% of the median per capita income of whites, Hispanic median per capita income equivalent to 50.7% of the median per capita income of whites. "This caused income inequality is one of the reasons the average level of education and relatively high labor productivity whites, while businesses often marginal productivity of labor to pay wages. The reason why there are differences between different ethnic education and labor productivity is because the history of racial discrimination or deprivation reduces the chance of black and Hispanic education. currently, the US city African-American high school students, only one-third of people reading and math scores above average, while white students than the average of 2/3 in many cases even if the difference between education and labor productivity does not suffer, blacks and Mexican wages are lower than whites; they are often refused the opportunity to engage in high-paying jobs in a study in 1998 proved that race. Discrimination so that men of African descent income decreased by