The Role of Law in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century

There is not a lot of law discussed in Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Piketty drops a few hints here and there about what laws he thinks likely contributes to widening wealth inequality (the advent of dynastic trusts, the lowering of marginal rates for the highest personal income tax brackets, which contribute to executive "super-salaries"), but his basic policy prescription is a small global wealth tax.

I would not oppose such a tax. There is something elegant about such a tax, if the international tax haven problem can be solved. But in my review of the book, I suggest that some examination of the legal order is in order. Legal rules and institutions contribute to wealth inequality indirectly. In Piketty's world, wealth inequality increases when the rate of return on private capital is greater than the rate of economic growth, or r > g in his vernacular. My review examines several areas of law in which legal rules and institutions drive up rates of return on private capital (r in Piketty-speak) without doing much to increase overall economic growth. These areas are financial regulation, antitrust law, oil and gas tax policy, electric utilities regulation, and the generic practice of grandfathering. In my view, a rather simplistic faith in trickle-down economics has caused policy-makers to support any policy in which Δg > 0, however speculatively, and if Δr >> 0, well then, God Bless. Of course, Δg is very often not greater than zero.