Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Reinterpreting the fundamental contradiction of capitalism

At a theoretical level this article discusses Piketty’s hypothesis that the distribution of income and wealth tends to become more concentrated over time when the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate of real output. We develop a post Keynesian model of growth and distribution showing that once capital is differentiated from wealth, the increase in income and wealth concentration actually occurs when the rate of valorization of financial and real estate assets is greater than the growth rate of real output, and that this situation may be triggered by financial liberalization.