Paul told me before about Piketty's performance. Maybe he could elaborate more.
There is not too much more to say - except that I typed too quickly: the paper, by the team of Piketty & Saez, was presented by the young Saez. The team has always been welcomed in the land of Neo-Classica and AFAIK they do not contest its propositions. Saez's graphs were telling and he let them do the performance. He is a modest self-effacing person and it is a meticulous stitching of micro-data. Having shown the appalling historical graph for the U.S. in a matter of fact way he then moved to the data for the other countries and for France . And then, in his soft French accent , half turning to the brasher Katz who had just presented his technology/education theses, he murmured something like 'and France has technology and education....just like the U.S.'. A quick look at the graphs at the end of the paper will suffice: Piketty and Saez "The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective" <http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/saez/piketty-saezAEA06.pdf> Paul
