In his feted book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty contends that wealth inequality rises inexorably under capitalism. The Financial Times has reported that, once various apparent errors are corrected, the European numbers show no tendency to rising wealth inequality after 1970. A judgment on this issue must, of course, await Prof Piketty’s response. Whatever the outcome, we are reminded that economic knowledge, especially in this area, is forged in long hours of work with sketchy and ambiguous statistical sources.
托馬斯•皮凱蒂(Thomas Piketty)的《21世紀的資本》(Capital in the Twenty-First Century)一書獲得了很高的名聲。他在書中主張，在資本主義制度下，財富不平等程度的上升不可阻擋。英國《金融時報》報導稱，一旦各個明顯誤差都得到修正，數據顯示，歐洲的財富不平等程度自1970年以來並未呈現上升趨勢。當然，對於這個問題作出的判斷必須等待皮凱蒂作出回應。無論結果怎樣，我們都要記住，經濟知識（尤其在這個領域）來自長時間分析粗略而模糊的統計來源的數據。