Thomas Piketty: evaluation

Transcript context

…But isn’t that re-imposing a kind of colonialism on Haitian government? If the French are going to monitor where all the money flows within Haitian government, that would require establishing quite a bit of sovereignty over Haiti. I think Haiti should be part of that. I think there are lots of people in Haiti who would like to monitor how this money is being used. Look, I’m not saying this is simple, but reparations are never simple. I can tell you, in my country you had to wait until 1999–2000 — only 20 years ago — for an official commission to look seriously at post–World War II reparation and Jewish expropriation during World War II, so this process takes time. If you look in the US, remember, you have to wait until 1988 to see a law adopted by US Congress to have reparation for the Japanese Americans which, as you know, were interred during World War II. During many decades people were saying, “Oh that’s impossible. That’s too complicated. Where are we going to draw the line? Where are we going to stop? How can you decide the amount?” I understand these are complicated decisions to be made. Is this a reason to forget about it and say we don’t care anymore? I don’t think so. I think this would be the worst answer. I fully recognize the complexity of the task. I’m certainly not trying to say this is easy, et cetera, but I reiterate my claim that if you abandon any attempt for justice, then you are in a very difficult situation to prepare for the future. Because then, people will tell you, “You care about this kind of expropriation and injustices, but you don’t care about this other kind. ” You have to try to develop some universal approach to justice in terms of objective criteria, including the distribution of income, the distribution of wealth, access to education. I don’t know any other approach. I know you’re very much a European federalist. In at least one interview, you argued that the major countries in the current European Union should, in a sense, secede and set up their own arrangements, part of which would redistribute more wealth. Would the net actual effect of that not be to greatly weaken the European Union we have now? You would have multiple tiers, or how is that going to work?…

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