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Thomas Piketty poses in his office in Paris on April 11, 2012. The economist may prove to be the most influential French thinker on America since Alexis de Tocqueville.

Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters

It sounds like a bad joke: Americas liberals have fallen for a Marx-referencing, Balzac-loving French intellectual who has proposed a worldwide tax on wealth. If Thomas Piketty (pronounced Tome-AH PEEK-et-ee) were not traveling around the United States on a triumphant book tour, you might think Rush Limbaugh had made the man up in one of his more blustery rants.

Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.

But no, he is quite real. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Pikettys 685-page tome about the history and future of inequality, has improbably climbed to No. 1 on Amazons best-seller list. (The books title is only its first Marx allusion.) As of this writing, Capital is beating out such fare as the young adult hit The Fault in Our Stars and Michael Lewis Flash Boys. The rock-star economist, as New York magazine dubbed him, has also grabbed the interest of official Washington. While recently passing through D.C., he took a little time to meet with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the IMF. Even Morning Joe, never exactly on the leading edge of ideas journalism, ran a segment about Capital Tuesday morning. I found out from my mother, who emailed to tell me the book sounded interesting.

Thats a tipping point.

Perhaps this shouldnt be surprising. Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, has been perhaps the most important thinker on inequality of the past decade or so. We can thank him and his various collaborators, including Berkeleys Emmanuel Saez and Oxfords Anthony Atkinson, for the research that uncovered the rise of the top 1 percent in both the U.S. and Europe. Now, with his book, hes handed liberals a coherent framework that justifies the discomfort that they probably already felt about the wealth gap.

Capital will change the political conversation by focusing it on wealth, not income.

Plenty of writers have already summarized Capital, but heres a very quick review. Whereas Pikettys past work has tended to focus on incomewhat workers and investors earnthe new book focuses on wealth: what we own. Using data reaching back to the 18th century, in the case of France, he argues that as economic growth slows in a country, the income generated by wealth balloons compared with income generated by work, and inequality skyrockets. This is because the return on wealth, such as a stock portfolio or real estate or even a factory, usually averages about 5 percent. If growth rates fall below that mark, the rich get richer. And over time, those who inherit great fortunes eventually come to dominate the economy. But the rest of us can respond, Piketty argues, by voting for redistributive policies. (Thats where his idea for a global wealth tax comes in. I think most of us Americans would be happy to see a hike on capital gains first.)

Some argue we shouldnt fret over inequality, because todays global elite are the working, meritocratic rich: They earn their outsized pay thanks to their enormous technical and business talent. But Pikettys research offers a simple retort. Todays rich may have worked for their success, but tomorrows wont have to. Already, Piketty argues, the very richest earn more income from their wealth than their labor. And just as the ruthless robber barons of the late 19th century gave way to F. Scott Fitzgeralds boozing heirs and heiresses, todays CEOs and hedge fund managers will give way to a generation of children who simply won the birth lottery.

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Thomas Piketty Capital: How Americas Liberals Fell for a French Economist