There's a persistent tension between the limits of the data he presents and the grandiosity of the conclusions he draws. At times this borders on schizophrenia. In introducing each set of data, he's all caution and modesty, as he should be, because measurement problems arise at every stage. Almost in the next paragraph, he states a conclusion that goes beyond what the data would support even if it were unimpeachable.
This tendency is apparent all through the book, but most marked at the end, when he sums up his findings about "the central contradiction of capitalism[.]" ...
Every claim in that dramatic summing up [Note: Which I skipped for brevity] is either unsupported or contradicted by Piketty's own data and analysis. (I'm not counting the unintelligible. The past devours the future?)
I suspect that a lot of people will migrate away from "climate change" to "income inequality" as the so-called consensus on the former model falters. And funny enough, the policies they will advocate to combat the latter (complete with its own mathematical model!) will be remarkably similar to what they want to combat the former.
