[Trumpet6]

Piketty's big contribution is the creation of time series of top wealth distribution going back to the ~1850. In the linked paper, all the time series start at 1960 at the earliest, thus dismissing most of the new empirical data.

So whatever technical merit the critique has, it doesn't seem to concern itself with the big picture results since it neglects the empirical work.

[aetherson]

Piketty's thesis is that the concentration of wealth in the permanent upper class of the 1800's is the historical law, and that the mid-20th Century prosperity of the middle class is a historical anomaly that was created by unprecedented destruction of real property by the two world wars, and further that now that the world wars are receding into history, we are returning to the 19th Century status quo.

If post-1960 data does not show a return to the status quo, then that undermines the core of Piketty's claims. Nobody is claiming that the 19th Century had a strong middle class.

[WDCDev]

Economic and political conditions of the mid 19th century led directly to the development of ideologies that we fought wars over in the first half of the 20th century.

I've always wondered whether humanity would enter a new cycle of competing ideologies. Maybe we are...