I spent the better part of two hours for googling this guy and book. Sounds very Marx-leaning to me. Typical European nowaday-mainstream, I would say. If that is true, it would not be surprising anymore that he gets plenty of applause from known left-leaning, Keynesian and socialist theoreticians.
http://pc.blogspot.de/2014/04/pikett...lets-have.html
Needless to say: while I do not judge his empirical data presentation on past eras (I have not gone into that, for that you indeed would need to read that fat book and wopuld need to have m uch more knowledge on the empirical data than I have, after all at best I am an interested layman on such details ), I seem to need opposing his conclusions. He sings of more taxes for the "rich", more social justice for the people, more equality in possessions - don't we hear this chorus
every single day in Western politics nowadays? There is not a single party in the Bundestag who does not populistically say the same. And I claim them all to be socialist parties, all of them, without exception.
As one author in another web publication said:
the logical outcome of Piketty's suggestions and conclusions must always be the government and original agenda of Francois Hollande.
See how well they do in France.
The French are Europe's biggest socialists by misled intellect. The Germans are Europe's biggest socialists by misled emotions, and social romanticism. It's surreal.