In the furore that followed, it became clear that Giles’ claims were overblown. For instance, when Chris Giles of the Financial Times discovered what he felt were errors in some of Piketty’s datasets, instead of inviting fair debate with the author he published a front-page exposé alleging that Piketty had fabricated some of his key numbers “from thin air”, making wealth inequality in the US and Britain seem much worse than it actually is. It is no wonder, then, that right-wing pundits have been scrambling for ways to discredit him.

These claims do serious damage to the prevailing justifications for free market capitalism.

What is more, Piketty argues that unrestricted accumulation, far from reinforcing social mobility and the values of democratic freedom, drives instead toward ossified hierarchies and plutocratic governments. Stepping into this breach, Piketty and his colleagues show that what Kuznets assumed to be a continuing trajectory toward greater equality was in fact an aberration – an “illusion” – in the longue durée of capitalism’s history, and that in reality the predominant trend bends toward divergence. The “Kuznets Curve” made sense at the time – in the middle of the 20th century – since inequality was in fact diminishing in Western countries, but his data has long needed updating. Piketty sets himself against Simon Kuznets, the Belarusian economist who became famous for demonstrating that, while inequality increases in the first stages of industrialization, the disparity between classes automatically evens out as economies mature.

What makes this book different is that it draws on a new trove of datasets that adds a degree of substance to the left’s critique, which economists and policymakers simply cannot ignore. For many of us who have been concerned about rising inequalities over the past few decades, Piketty’s conclusions are nothing new, and many of the graphs that illustrate his text are long-familiar images. Clearly his argument has touched a raw nerve. It surely says something interesting about our times that this 700 page tome packed with dense historical data on incomes and wealth has become so popular, spreading with meme-like force and leaving bookstores around the world struggling to keep pace with demand. It is always a bit surprising to hear an economist described as a “rock star” in the media, but Thomas Piketty has been collecting this accolade in spades since the publication of his runaway bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty.

Capital in the 21st century book