Inequality will widen to the point where it becomes unsustainable – both politically and economically – unless action is taken to redistribute income and wealth. The wealthy are getting wealthier while everybody else is struggling. Returns to capital are rising faster than economies are growing. Like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Maynard Keynes's General Theory it is a tome that will be more quoted from than read right through. That said, it is still a book about economics, and many readers will find it hard going when they get to the sections on the Cobb-Douglas production function and the marginal productivity of capital. He likes Balzac and Jane Austen, he knows his Elizabeth Bennet from his Lady Mary. Quentin Tarantino gets a mention, as does the film Titanic. Where much modern writing about economics is cloaked in impenetrable jargon, Piketty is not afraid to draw on literature and popular culture to make his points.
It is a big book in every sense of the word, using empirical evidence from 30 countries to describe how capitalism has evolved over the past 300 years and is now reverting to what Piketty calls the Downton Abbey world of a century ago.
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