Ideas, as well as interests, matter in politics. They shape the debate and determine plausible policy prescriptions. From the 1970s onwards, the intellectual and political current has run strongly against equality. The Reagan-Thatcher consensus on low taxes, and their suspicion of redistribution, has been remarkably powerful. The Blair-Brown government had a lower top rate of income tax for all its 13 years than Thatcher did for nine. Greater inequality has often been seen as a price worth paying for economic gains.
The intellectual tide may, however, be turning. There are two important pieces of evidence weighing in for the egalitarians. The first is Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which made the front page lead of Le Monde this week because his 685-page tome has topped the best-seller list on Amazon in the United States. That is unprecedented for any economist, let alone a French one.
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