Unbounded: References
Why This Chapter Exists
The Unbounded series covers policy, economics, history, and philosophy. This chapter lists the books, research, and datasets behind the arguments made. Readers are encouraged to research the evidence and explore the source code to create their own visualizations and discoveries.
“Some people use statistics as a drunken man uses a lamppost - for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang
Books
The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch. The philosophical foundation for treating progress as error correction and problem solving. Supports the idea that institutions should help people generate and test better ideas.
Economics: The User’s Guide, Ha-Joon Chang. Presents economics as a collection of competing models rather than a single doctrine. Supports comparing mechanisms and policy trade-offs.
The Trading Game, Gary Stevenson. Offers a practitioner’s view of modern financial markets. Illustrates how financial markets diverge from household outcomes.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty. Provides a long-term view of wealth concentration and the role of taxation. Informs the role of compounding, distribution, and stability.
Papers
Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data (Saez and Zucman, 2016). Establishes the capitalization method and provides a long-term series of U.S. wealth concentration. UC Berkeley repository PDF
Rethinking Capital and Wealth Taxation (Piketty, Saez, and Zucman, 2023). Combines comprehensive income taxation, inheritance taxation, and progressive wealth taxation in one framework. Manuscript PDF
The Effects of Wealth Taxation on Wealth Accumulation and Wealth Inequality (Jakobsen, Jakobsen, Kleven, and Zucman, 2018). Examines behavioral responses to wealth taxation using Danish data. Working paper portal
Data
Saez-Piketty-Zucman distributional national accounts (DINA). A key source for distributional trends and tax-incidence analysis. Start here: Gabriel Zucman DINA page Download tables directly: Distributional tables
World Inequality Database (WID). Provides international comparisons and long-term inequality data. WID data portal
Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA). U.S. wealth distribution by percentile group. DFA explorer Raw DFA CSV zip
Economic Policy Institute Productivity-Pay Tracker. Documents the divergence between productivity and typical worker compensation since the 1970s. Productivity-Pay Gap tracker
FRED housing and income series. Public data for reconstructing housing affordability over time. Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States (MSPUS) Real Median Household Income in the United States (MEHOINUSA672N)
U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data. Sources for debt, deficits, receipts, and outlays. Debt to the Penny Monthly Treasury Statement
Congress.gov bill texts for current wealth-tax proposals. Tax thresholds, rates, enforcement, and valuation rules. Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026 (S.4246) Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act (S.3956)
Pew Research Center tax attitudes. Provides nonpartisan polling on tax fairness and public concerns. Top tax frustrations for Americans (2026)
ProPublica investigative reporting on ultrawealthy tax minimization. Documents strategies such as borrowing against appreciated assets instead of selling them. Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale
Reports
World Inequality Report (World Inequality Lab). A major cross-country analysis of income and wealth concentration. World Inequality Lab / WID portal
Taxation and Inequality (OECD, 2024). Examines tax design, inequality, and enforcement for high-net-worth individuals. OECD report PDF
Tech
These articles were written as Clojure notebooks, rendered with Clay and Quarto. Most of the visualizations were created using the Plotje library. These libraries are packaged in the Noj toolkit for data science.
Critical Thinking and Why It Matters
Critical thinking means testing claims against evidence, definitions, and alternatives. Ask what a number measures, what it leaves out, and what other explanations fit. Inequality debates mix moral language, technical measurements, and political narratives. Clear definitions, traceable evidence, and a willingness to revise claims help us distinguish convincing arguments from misleading ones.
I started looking into wealth concentration to help a friend have better conversations about it. I expected to spend a few evenings reading, gather some useful facts, and move on. Instead, I fell down a rabbit hole.
If you’d like to keep exploring wealth distribution, these were the resources I found most useful.
Conclusion
Knowledge grows when we share what we learn, test ideas together, and build on each other’s discoveries. Read critically, follow the evidence, and explore the code. You may discover something that changes how you see the world. I hope these resources help you do exactly that.