Summary: In this part one of our review of Thomas Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, we cover the book in detail and summarize its arguments and conclusions. In the next part, to be released next week, we will look at Picketty's ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of the criticisms of the book. But this part will cover the book's basic ideas about how to measure and talk about inequality, its data sets, the illusion of meritocracy, "Vautrin's lesson" from Balzac's Pere Goiriot, and will explain the relationships Picketty theorizes among the capital-income ratio, the rate of return on capital, and the growth rate of the economy, as well as the savings rate.
