The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
Interpretation
Knowledge and education are essential in reducing inequality within societies.
Thomas Piketty asserts that the primary driver in decreasing inequality throughout history has been the spread and accessibility of knowledge and education. This implies that empowering individuals through learning fosters equality, enabling them to improve their circumstances and challenge societal disparities.
In practice
During a speech on social justice, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of educational reform.
Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
The discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.
Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.
So, this is my government's agenda: educate your daughter and save your daughter.
There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.
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