At least we can afford a book
A new book by French economist Thomas Piketty shows how capitalism makes the rich even richer to the point that a small group—an oligarchy—come to control most of the power in the United States. And it's flying off the shelves.
Is the United States controlled by a wealth-based oligarchy? It would appear that the question is at least interesting—if not downright true—to a lot of people in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is at the #2 spot on Amazon’s best seller list and is, as of publication, temporarily out of stock.
And it makes sense. Piketty uses over 100 years of data to clearly show how wealth grows faster than wages do when the return on capital (r) is greater than the economy’s growth rate (g). Which explains how we’ve arrived at the point that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans have a great deal more influence and power that the rest of us do (re: oligarchy).
Even better; he has some ideas on how we can fix this situation, as is outlined by the Washington Post’s Matt O’Brien in his article, “4 ways to stop the U.S. from becoming a Piketty-style oligarchy.”