Resumen de Wealth, Taxation and Inequality

Thomas Piketty, Frederico Cantante

• Economic inequality is a social, political and historical construction. In order to understand how inequality evolves we need to look at different dimensions and analyse several components through which this kind of material oppositions are defined. Tax system, labour market institutions, education, economic growth, demography and historical events like wars are some of the key dimensions structuring the distribution of wealth and/or income over time. There is nothing natural about inequality, because its degree changes in time and space according to the intersection of these variables. In this sense, the way societies deal with inequality is determined by political ideas. Inequality can be seen as being ethically unproblematic or, on the contrary, censurable; it can also be regarded as growth friendly or as having multidimensional negative impacts in the way societies function.