Its a supremely flawed book thats drawn criticism on a plethora of things across the board, but nonetheless is touted on high by hyper-leftists because its "an apology for the use of state coercion to take property away from some people who supposedly have too much," and primarily focuses on 'inequality' through a politicized lens of radical left bias.
Paul Krugman thinks its the best thing since sliced bread, so that should tell you the sphere this book is floating in.
For example its drawn criticism for:
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Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has been widely debated on theoretical grounds, yet continues to attract acclaim for its historically-infused data analysis. In this study we conduct a closer scrutiny of Piketty's empirics than has appeared thus far, focusing upon his treatment of the United States. We find evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data. Additional evidence suggests that Piketty used a highly distortive data assumption from the Soviet Union to accentuate one of his main historical claims about global “capitalism” in the 20th century. Taken together, these problems suggest that Piketty’s highly praised and historically-driven empirical work may actually be one of the book’s greatest weaknesses.
Full paper at the link:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012From Robert Murphy:
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Piketty’s mistakes were not random. No, he used his convenient errors in order to spin a narrative about coldhearted pro-business Republican presidents, in contrast to the Democratic heroes of the workers (namely FDR, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama).
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Conclusion
It is ironic when you think about it. When Piketty’s book first came out, even leftist economists admitted there were major, fundamental problems with the theory underlying it. (See for example my discussions of Brad DeLong and then Larry Summers’ reviews of Piketty.) But everybody agreed that Piketty’s empirical work was top-notch.
Now that more and more critics are reporting that Piketty’s book is riddled with errors and questionable moves in its treatment of historical facts, ranging from the ridiculous to the subtle, his apologists fall back on, “Well, even if you put aside those problems, the book’s conclusions still stand.”
So yes, if you throw out Piketty’s underlying theory, and the empirical evidence that supposedly verified it, then Piketty’s book is still a great thing–because it demonizes the rising power of the rich and calls for massive income and capital taxes. It’s refreshing that this truth has been rendered so plain over the past 9 months since the book came out.
https://www.mises.ca/the-quick-summary-of-my-paper-with-magness-on-pikettyQuote
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century was hailed by fashionable opinion upon its release. But it turns out that the author massaged his data, pulled numbers out of thin air, and rewrote history to conform to his biases.
- Tom Woods
If you are interested and have the extra free time and access to the book to read it, its sometimes worth understanding the oft-flawed places modern leftist ideologues are coming from. I would just double check literally anything he says before accepting it as fact.
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