Thomas Piketty: observation

Transcript context

…Sure. Of course. In terms of welfare, of course, as economists, you know what matters is productivity, not income per se because if you have a higher income just because you work longer hours, the effect on welfare is ambiguous. It depends how you value leisure versus work, et cetera. Presumably, European countries decided to have more vacation and a bigger reduction of working times than the US in the 20th century. It was not the case a century ago. In the early 20th century, working hours were actually shorter in the US than Europe, partly because productivity was higher, so you can afford working less. Anyway, today and in the past century, the decline in working hours has been bigger in Germany and France. Presumably, this was a choice. This was a complicated political process, but nobody in Germany or France today is proposing to divide by two the number of weeks of vacation and go to the US federal law in that respect. In terms of welfare, my own view, as you can imagine, is that when you multiply your productivity by 10 over the past century, it actually makes sense to take some of this increase in productivity to have more vacation, to spend more time with your children and family, to spend more time traveling around the world. For me, like for many Europeans, the idea of taking only two weeks’ vacation over the summer when you are so rich looks like one of the most stupid things you can do in life. But look, different people can make different choices, of course, about this. If the relationship between wealth and happiness is so diffuse, and I would agree it may be — so I’m happier than some billionaires I know — why worry so much about wealth inequality? Why not focus on inequality of well-being, which could be something quite different?…

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