Physician Incomes in the Twenty-first Century: Time for a New Social Contract

Excerpt

Thomas Picketty’s new opus, Capital in the 21st Century, has been acclaimed as the book most purchased (Amazon ran out of copies for a brief period in May), most talked about (The Guardian calls it a VIB—very important book), and least read in 2014. As a matter of editorial duty, I did read it (though admittedly not in full). The book contains huge amounts of historical data organized into a number of eyestrain-inducing tables and graphs. However, the basic idea is that over time, the return on capital investment will always exceed the rate of growth of the economy as a whole (which Picketty summarizes in the equation r > g). If this is true, then wealth will tend to concentrate over time, and with it political power. (Picketty views the period of rapid economic growth between World War II and the 1970s as an historical anomaly.) To avoid this plutocratic dystopia, Picketty suggests a solution that will never be implemented: a global, progressive tax on wealth. You have to admire his neo-Marxian audacity. …