This morning, Jonathan Jansen, vice-chancellor of Free State University, posted the following message on Facebook: 'Dear students, your education will be incomplete unless you all read Pikkety's new book Capital in the 21st century. What he discovers about inequality over time, and how to remedy it, might just save our country from social and economic doom. Required reading!' Thomas Piketty, and his thesis, has certainly taken the world by storm. Paul Krugman