Last week, I watched something rather peculiar unfold in a lecture theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A collection of earnest American economists met to ponder a 577-page tract on inequality and tax policy by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old professor of economics from Paris.
But instead of simply meeting in sombre, academic isolation, the event was so wildly popular that tickets for it sold out – and the discussion had to be broadcast into a neighbouring auditorium. The excitement did not stop there. In recent days, Piketty’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has soared up the bestseller lists and sparked endless blogs, debates and comment.
The White House and US Treasury have held talks with the Frenchman. An entire segment of the primetime television show Morning Joe pondered its message of fiscal reform (with co-host Joe Scarborough declaring, “I just don’t think that a billionaire should be paying just 14 per cent tax!”). Interest has been so high that the style-savvy New York magazine has dubbed Piketty a “Rock-Star Economist”. Not bad for a leftwing French intellectual whom (almost) nobody in the US had ever heard of a month ago. Particularly given that the book essentially argues that inherited wealth and inequality have soared in the west – and can only be contained by much higher taxes.