This is a fantastic book. Highly recommended. What follows is just a home for my notes on the book. Also, see Christine Desan , a commentator on money and the institutional structures that support it. There is a connection with my AI deliberations. "Money" is in the eye of the beholder. Piketty points out that the social structures behind it are also in the eye of the beholder, such as class, property, and borders. This leads to the observation that many see elements of capitalism, such as inequality, are real and not "subjective." Economic inequality tangibles to actual results. The human "economy" is built on top of a real environment. Money is imaginary until you have none. Wealth is in the eye of the beholder until you look at the physical destruction involved in our economic history (war, depression, climate change). Since all aspects of the "economy" and the structures of society are subjective, it is not surprising to see wildly differen...

I have been playing with graphs in the World Inequality Database, a project of Thomas Piketty and associates. The graph is interactive. You can click on the link below to play with it. How much do the top 1% own? This graph has some interesting features: The Russian kleptocracy, emerging since the late 1990's has created more inequality than we see even in Saudi Arabia, a country owned and operated by the Royal Family. With 50% of its wealth in the hands of the top 1%, Russia is possibly the most unequal country on Earth. China is catching up with the rest of the world, with 30% of its wealth in the hands of the top 1%. This is about the level of most developed countries. The USA is becoming more unequal, but in 1910 it was as unequal as Russia has become lately. 1910 was the era of the "Robber Barons" in the USA.