‘A Brief History of Equality’ Review: Flattening the Wealth Curve

Thomas Piketty attempts to lure readers unable to scale the mountain of ‘Capital.’

By Tunku Varadarajan. Excerpts:

"Behind Mr. Piketty’s analysis is a rigid righteousness that regards equality as a moral pinnacle and inequality as repugnant. He sees today’s socialists as the successors to the anti-colonialists, abolitionists and suffragists of the past. Capitalists, by contrast, are modern-day enslavers, heirs to a legacy of oppression. Mr. Piketty also dodges important questions. First: Why do we care about inequality per se? If a venture capitalist sells a new product and improves lives, and then buys a jet with his earnings, why is this bad? Similarly, we can all be equal though poorer: Do we really want uniform wretchedness? Inequality can be a symptom of kleptocracy, for sure (look at Russia)—but it can also be due to a flourishing economy. Second: If we garrote our golden goose, will she still lay eggs?

Mr. Piketty insists that inequality is a “social, historical, and political construction”—one that can be re-constructed along redistributive lines. “For the same level of economic or technological development,” he asserts, “there are always many different ways of organizing a property system.” But would the level of economic and technological development that has led to a radical erosion of political and material inequality have occurred without capitalism?

Mr. Piketty doesn’t tell us.

—Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University’s Center of Capitalism and Society."