As far as I can tell skimming through these comments, no one else here has actually read the thing.<p>I'm not finished with it yet, so I won't offer a final opinion, but to the page I'm on it's been an impressive work. He's very apt at weaving together a narrative spanning far, far, longer than nearly all economics research, which is backed up with real data they (him and collaborators) spent quite a long time digging up and parsing. The book uses this sweeping dataset to color the major research/writings of prominent economists from several eras. Up to this point I had not read anything that had stepped back to this extent in terms of considering a history of economic thought, but which also backed up the history with data.<p>Personally, I find the basic tenets of his thesis pretty convincing, although, again, I have not yet finished the book. I think this was published at a very opportune time as people begin to read more about the similarities between the wealth structure of the early 20th century and today. Considering the middle of the 20th century as something of an aberration is difficult to wrap my head around, because (like most of us I assume) I've had so little exposure to people and their experiences from before 1940.<p>EDIT: To be clear, the foundation of this book began with research in the 1990s, so it's not as if I was trying to imply it was a completely opportunistic publishing. Rather, I consider it to be somewhat fortuitous to be able to gain a historical appreciation of these trends as they reach new peaks.
TLDR : rising inequality a return to "normal" after 2 huge destructions.<p>Inequality is returning to pre world-wars level - ok, that's an easily verifiable fact.<p>However, how do we know it's a bad thing? There is no conclusive evidence that rising inequality will have bad consequences on say growth - it might. We just don't know for sure.<p>OTOH, we know quite well how we got into that "equality" period - destruction of huge amounts of capital and human lives in 2 world wars that turned European countries from world leaders into 2nd rate places - yet very equalitarian (Gini coefficients etc) compared to other places.<p>It doesn't strike me as a "good thing".
Here is a more critical reading of Piketty (<a href="http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/10/terence-corcoran-the-straw-dogs-of-thomas-pikettys-capitalism/" rel="nofollow">http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/10/terence-corcora...</a>).<p>One thing that surprises me when I read reviews about Piketty (I haven't read the book) is that they state as if it's a surprising fact that the inequality is inherent in free market Piketty was smart enough to find out about it. Is this a news to even trained economists?
One question that popped in my mind after reading the headline: can you possibly have a non-capitalist free democracy? You can't forbid people from "being capitalistic".
Here'a a different view on Piketty's book: <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-20/the-most-important-book-ever-is-all-wrong" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-20/the-most-im...</a><p>TLDR: The Most Important Book Ever Is All Wrong
I really don't understand why all this Marx 2.0 stuff is on Hacker News. Marx's ideas have been tried, over and over again, and failed. There are far better essays on capital and technology out there.<p>The Mouse and the Market
"If you are for technological progress, and its wide availability, then you should be an enthusiastic supporter of capital accumulation and its rational investment."
<a href="http://mises.org/daily/1786/" rel="nofollow">http://mises.org/daily/1786/</a><p>Taxing income is horrendous enough, but necessary. Taxing accumulated capital is just plain destructive.
"high rates of inflation that eroded the assets of creditors"<p>So, in theory, even higher rates of inflation would be even better for income redistribution! How did that work in Zimbabwe or Yugoslavia? Sweden, with its low headline inflation over the past 4 decades, must be a cesspool where the rich are eating the children of the poor as a delicacy!