Capital Punishment

Capital in the Twenty-first Century. BY THOMAS PIKETTY. TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER. Belknap Press, 2014, 696 pp. $39.95.

Every now and then, the field of economics produces an important book; this is one of them. Thomas Piketty’s tome will put capitalist wealth back at the center of public debate, resurrect interest in the subject of wealth distribution, and revolutionize how people view the history of income inequality. On top of that, although the book’s prose (translated from the original French) might not qualify as scintillating, any educated person will be able to understand it -- which sets the book apart from the vast majority of works by high-level economic theorists.

Piketty is best known for his collaborations during the past decade with his fellow French economist Emmanuel Saez, in which they used historical census data and archival tax records to demonstrate that present levels of income inequality in the United States resemble those of the era before World War II. Their revelations concerning the wealth concentrated among the richest one percent of Americans -- and, perhaps even more striking, among the richest 0.1 percent -- have provided statistical and intellectual ammunition to the left in recent years, especially during the debates sparked by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests and the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

In this book, Piketty keeps his focus on inequality but attempts something grander than a mere diagnosis of capitalism’s ill effects. The book presents a general theory of capitalism intended to answer a basic but profoundly important question. As Piketty puts it:

Foreign Affairs Magazine.