In 2013, Thomas Piketty published his Le capital au XXI siècle (Capital in the Twenty-First Century).20 Piketty and his book became something of a sensation in part because the book gave a justification to those seeking to expand dramatically the role of government. Piketty claims to have discovered new mathematical laws about the behavior of inequality that applies across all times and nations. His general thesis is that major dislocations of the first half
