I haven’t read the Piketty book. Even after I do read it, I won’t be able to add anything useful to the discussion, because I’m not an economist. That said, I will link to interesting reviews and discussions about the book and the topic.

Robert Kuttner at American Prospect talks about Piketty’s discussion of the superior power of inherited wealth. Piketty says that the super wealthy have better advisors than regular wealthy people and the rate of return on invested capital is higher than any normal salary.

While more fortunes were arguably “earned” in the period after the two wars, the tendency of unearned wealth to cumulate continued. Michael Kinsley, reviewing the original Forbes 400 of the early 1980s in The New Republic, calculated that all but 59 of the 400 fortunes were rooted either in inherited wealth, lucky timing, or government contracts. Piketty calculates that only about one-third of the current Forbes fortunes are primarily entrepreneurial.