Capital in the twenty-first century (1st edition.)

Thomas Piketty is a fine example of an evaluative thinker.

In this book, he not only provides detailed and sustained explanations of why he sees existing arguments relating to income and wealth distribution as flawed, but also gives us very detailed evaluations of the significance of a vast amount of data explaining why incomes is distributed in the ways it is.

As Piketty stresses, 'the distribution question. deserves to be studied in a systematic and methodical fashion.' This stress on evaluating the significance of data leads him to focus on the central evaluative questions, and look in turn at the acceptability, relevance, and adequacy of existing justifications for the unequal distribution of wealth.