When the English translation of Thomas Piketty's Le capital au XXIe siècle came out in the spring of 2014, it struck a raw nerve. It is rare for a weighty tome on economic theory to achieve widespread attention, but Piketty, a Parisian researcher known more for sober analysis than any Left Bank outbursts, has produced some conclusions on wealth creation and distribution that are both provocative and disturbing. His research analyses tax records spread over many decades and more than twenty countries, enabling him to study historical patterns and irregularities in the distribution of wealth. His main thesis is based on an economic formula: “The Central Contradiction of Capitalism: r > g.” In this equation, the return on capital (r) grows more rapidly than income or output (g). As a result, this drives relentlessly expanding levels of inequality, whereby “the entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labour.” There is plenty of evidence out there to support this view. Thus, a recent report from Credit Suisse: