The (relative) mania surrounding Thomas Piketty and his unlikely bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has stretched from spring to summer. From a report of his sold-out lecture on Monday in London by the Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries:

“Piketty wants us to realise that the 20th century was unusual: rapid, unrepeatable population increases that helped accelerate growth, combined with shocks (two world wars, the Great Depression) that reduced the value of capital and so kept inequalities low. These are exceptions in human history rather than the rules. The 21st century won’t be like the 20th, the professor predicts. If we don’t act, the accumulation of capital in the hands of the very few will resemble the norms in the early 19th or 18th centuries.

Someone asks Piketty if what Margaret Thatcher proposed in the 1980s was right, namely that if you reduce inequality you reduce growth. ‘I have no problem with inequality per se,’ he replies. ‘Up to a point it can be a motivation for growth. When inequalities grow more extreme, it can be no good for growth. It leads to the perpetuation of inequality. Over time that stops mobility from happening.'”