<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Last night’s meeting of the AWARE group reading “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” began the consideration of "Part Three: The Structure of Inequality.” </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">At the next meeting we’ll talk about chapter 8, “Two Worlds.” On-line access to the book: <<a href="http://resistir.info/livros/piketty_capital_in_the_21_century_2014.pdf" class="">http://resistir.info/livros/piketty_capital_in_the_21_century_2014.pdf</a>>.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">By “Two Worlds,” P. doesn’t mean the worlds of the rich and the poor, but rather two major classes of the rich: the 1% live radically different lives (and earn radically different incomes) than the next 9%. In fact, he is even more specific, distinguishing the .1% (the super-rich), the small subset who live off of income from capital.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The chapters are outlined at the end of the book. The outline of chapter 8 is as follows:</div><div class=""><i class=""><br class=""></i></div><div class=""><i class=""><b class="">8. Two Worlds </b><br class="">A Simple Case: The Reduction of Inequality in France in the Twentieth Century <br class="">The History of Inequality: A Chaotic Political History <br class="">From a “Society of Rentiers” to a “Society of Managers” <br class="">The Different Worlds of the Top Decile [= 10%]<br class="">The Limits of Income Tax Returns <br class="">The Chaos of the Interwar Years <br class="">The Clash of Temporalities <br class="">The Increase of Inequality in France since the 1980s <br class="">A More Complex Case: The Transformation of Inequality in the United States <br class="">The Explosion of US Inequality after 1980 <br class="">Did the Increase of Inequality Cause the Financial Crisis? <br class="">The Rise of Supersalaries <br class="">Cohabitation in the Upper Centile</i> [= ’THE 1%’ —CGE]<br class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Members and friends of AWARE are invited to join the group at 6pm on Wednesday 24 June at 5 Litchfield Lane in Champaign (regardless of whether they’ve read the text).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">—CGE </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">===========================ADDENDUM==============================</div><div class="">A range of uneasiness is prompted by Piketty’e equation capital = wealth. A crude summary—</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">DAVID HARVEY (et al.) - ‘capital' should be restricted to Marx’ usage: not all property but only productive property; </div><div class="">PAUL KRUGMAN (& D. Green) - the inflated salaries of CEOs are more like capital than income from labor;</div><div class="">MATT ROGNLIE (MIT grad student) - the capital share of national income has risen (and the share going to workers has fallen) as P. says, but - when you account for depreciation properly - less dramatically than P. says, and entirely about housing;</div><div class="">RICHARD D. WOLFF (& yr. obdt. svt.) - capital should be distinguished into investible assets and other assets that go to make up net worth, for tax purposes; </div><div class="">(e.g., if investible assets over $1million were subject to a progressive wealth tax, only 1% of Americans would be affected by the tax).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">###</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>