<Bill Gates v. Thomas Piketty>

Gates argues a number of points. He believes that Piketty does not focus enough on consumption inequality — fair enough, though the book is about wealth inequality — and that he does not differentiate between the good rich investing in businesses and the bad rich simply consuming their wealth.
Moreover, he argues that we have not reached a state of old-world dynastic wealth and that philanthropy might be a powerful force for dissipating concentrated fortunes from generation to generation. “I fully agree that we don’t want to live in an aristocratic society in which already-wealthy families get richer simply by sitting on their laurels and collecting what Piketty calls ‘rentier income,’” Gates writes. “But I don’t think America is anything close to that.”