Accounting for Inequality

Abstract

Piketty’s study of capital and inequality, especially the distribution of the national income through a “capital-labor split,” is examined and compared with a model developed from data sets from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Piketty’s inclusion of executive supersalaries as labor income is questioned as over-estimating labor’s share of national income distribution and labor’s role as a causal factor in the intensification of inequality.