Common Sense on Inequality

Tags: Austrian Economics Overview, Other Schools of Thought, Free Markets

04/26/2014 Peter G. Klein

Peter Klein talks about inequality—how people are different, what determines income and wealth on the free market, why elites are so excited about Thomas Piketty’s new book on capital, and how attempts to reduce aggregate inequality through progressive taxation are fraught with difficulty. Klein is the Mises Institute’s Executive Director and Carl Menger Research Fellow.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.