Chronicles: On Our Troubled Times by Thomas Piketty – review

Eight years on from the banking crisis, Thomas Piketty’s calls for financial reform are still ignored. This collection of articles finds him undiminished in his beliefs

Thomas Piketty depresses as much as inspires. Read him and you become convinced that western democracies have set themselves problems they no longer have the will to solve.

Democracy’s superiority to dictatorship is not that democratic leaders are necessarily more virtuous than dictators are. Nor can anyone but a cockeyed optimist believe that democratic publics are by definition always clever and benevolent. Democracies’ great advantage is meant to be that they have a rubbish chute. When leaders and policies fail, we shove them through it and replace them with something better.

Continue reading...