ARI Fellow Don Watkins reviews Thomas Piketty’s “new” book, The Economics of Inequality, in The Claremont Review of Books. In this book, Piketty tries to explain why he believes that economic inequality is a problem and what we should do about it:

If luck played any role in a person’s achievements, Piketty argues, then he doesn’t deserve his money. That is, there’s no moral argument against confiscating anything he has over that exceeds what others have, only the practical constraint of ensuring that this redistribution doesn’t end up harming the least advantaged. And since luck always plays a role — no one chooses his parents, or native intelligence, or the place and time in which he’s born — no one ever earns anything and the government has the right to take as much as it wants.

But does it really follow that, “no one ever earns anything and the government has the right to take as much as it wants”? To find out, read the whole thing here.