By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Seventh Chancellor of the University of Guyana; Previously Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Sometime Fellow of Harvard University and Fellow of the LSE
With its history and demography, Guyana needs to strive continuously for the achievement of equality, and its government has to be seen to be doing this. Policy and perception are both important.
Thomas Piketty, a world-renowned French professor of economics, has just summarised his extensive body of writings into a concise volume, A Brief History of Equality, published by Harvard University Press in 2022. It is widely acclaimed for its insights on problems of inequality.
Since the end of the eighteenth century, Piketty writes, there has been a long-term global trend toward equality, but it remains limited in scope. Various inequalities have persisted, at considerable and unjustified levels, affecting issues such as status, property, power, income, gender, and origin.