Here's what the world's richest man thinks of Thomas Piketty

Billionaire philanthropist and the richest man in the world Bill Gates has read Thomas Piketty's lefty polemic Capital - and he mostly agrees with it.

For those - such as Ed Miliband - who are finding it hard to digest all 700 pages of the French economist's tome, Capital is essentially an analysis of wealth and income inequality which concludes that unequal distribution of wealth causes economic and social instability. To combat this, Piketty suggests global wealth taxes on capital rather than income. Gates also points to a neat four-paragraph summary of the book from the Economist.

In his review of Piketty, published on his blog (link opens to blog in full), Gates says that like the economist he is also a big believer of the "estate tax" - otherwise known as a mansion tax to you and me. While he believes there are flaws in Piketty, most simply that it does not give a "full picture of how wealth is created and how it decays", he says overall:

I very much agree with Piketty that:

High levels of inequality are a problem—messing up economic incentives, tilting democracies in favour of powerful interests, and undercutting the ideal that all people are created equal.

Capitalism does not self-correct toward greater equality—that is, excess wealth concentration can have a snowball effect if left unchecked.

Governments can play a constructive role in offsetting the snowballing tendencies if and when they choose to do so.

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