The opinion pages, economic journals and liberal websites are atwitter (a-Twitter?) these days over French economist Thomas Piketty‘s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Left wingers cite Piketty’s statistics showing growing wealth inequality–though some have been challenged by the Financial Times–in support of Piketty’s policy response, huge taxes on high incomes and accumulated wealth.

One suspects that many of his fans have another agenda in mind. They’d like to gull a majority of the 99 percent to vote for parties that would put their friends in control of an engorged state apparatus.