[igonvalue]

I think there are two flaws in your premise.

First, I think Piketty is merely making the claim that whenever r is greater than g, inequality tends to increase.

From the book:

> When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

Second, r is actually the return to capital, not the "growth rate" of capital. That is, the owners of capital can (and will) choose to spend some of it rather than reinvesting all of it. You can imagine a steady state where the return to capital is tremendous but wealthy oligarchs are also profligate and reinvest only enough so that their investment keeps pace with g.

[yummyfajitas]

Your second point is an interesting theory, but seems unstable. What if one capital owner decides to consume a smaller amount of his wealth, and thereby increase his share of the economy?

Eventually he would rule the world.

[igonvalue]

Yes, I'm not saying that's where society is actually headed. It's just a hypothetical to illustrate how r can diverge from capital's "growth rate". To rephrase the last sentence, "In the extreme case, you can imagine a hypothetical equilibrium where..."