<Bill
Gates v. Thomas Piketty>
Gates
argues a number of points. He believes that Piketty does not focus enough on
consumption inequality — fair enough, though the book is about wealth inequality
— and that he does not differentiate between the good rich investing in
businesses and the bad rich simply consuming their wealth.
Moreover, he
argues that we have not reached a state of old-world dynastic wealth and that
philanthropy might be a powerful force for dissipating concentrated fortunes
from generation to generation. “I fully agree that we don’t want to live in an
aristocratic society in which already-wealthy families get richer simply by
sitting on their laurels and collecting what Piketty calls ‘rentier income,’”
Gates writes. “But I don’t think America is anything close to
that.”
