His historical account of wealth accumulation, the mass of statistical evidence he musters in support of it, and his analysis of present-day trends are all an excellent read. His weakness lies, not in his description, but in his prescription: his analysis of the root causes of the concentration of wealth and the remedies he proposes.

In every case Piketty ignores the extent to which the rate of return on land and capital is influenced by state intervention in the market. If there's truth to his indictment, it's an indictment against corporatism, not free markets.

For example, he argues that the tendency of rent to exceed growth has nothing to do with market imperfections. He largely ignores the dependence of rates of return on property on the legal structure; he writes that the growth of inequality in France after the Revolution paralleled that in England, despite the Civil Code's having "abolished all legal privileges" and "guaranteed absolute equality before the laws of property as well as freedom of contract…."