" , , , an idea whose time has come."

The full quotation is from Victor Hugo:   "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."    That may be what we're seeing in the phenomenal success of 42 year old French economist Thomas Piketty's best selling, 700 page book of graphs and charts and historical economic data and analysis.

As dull as that sounds, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Harvard University Press) is also about big ideas.  Beyond having the #1 best selling book on amazon.com, Piketty is the hottest guest for serious tv talk shows right now.   It's the ideas, backed by an extensive data base, that challenge the conservative economic theory of trickle-down economics.

Despite Ronald Reagen and all the conservatives ever since, accumulation of wealth does not "raise all boats."  Piketty has the data to back up that conclusion from historical analysis of wealth and economic growth over the last two centuries.  A former economist with the World Bank has called Piketty's work "one of the watershed books in economic thinking."

What this extensive data base shows is the market place is not self-correcting, and laissez-faire economics is not a benevolent system.  Rather, returns on capital investments will always outpace the growth of the economy;  even without the help of tax cuts for them, the rich get richer and the rest of us don't.   When you give tax advantages to the wealthy on top of that, inequality accelerates.

Piketty is not affiliated with any political ideology;  he considers himself a pragmatist who simply follows the data.  From that position, he argues that extreme inequality "threatens our democratic institutions."   He favors a progressive tax policy that redistributes wealth and reduces the inequality of opportunity.   Democracy is not just about one man, one vote;  but also about equality of opportunity and protection of rights of all.

There will be critics from the right, but this makes a far stronger case for what progressives have believed all along -- because it is based on actual study of the data over two centuries.

Ralph