From Beijing to London to Washington to other points on the map of this globalized economy, “inequality” has become a hot topic. China has its own methods of handling those the regime’s leaders feel have engaged in excessively conspicuous consumption. But show trials and re-education are tools not readily available to politicians in democratic countries. So when Hillary Clinton opines that something must be wrong when CEOs earn more that 300-times what their employees make, and all 19 of her potential Republican opponents attack President Obama for having presided over a sharp increase in inequality, we have an unusual all-party, multi-nation consensus that something must be done.

The inequality complained of has four related dimensions: wealth, income, opportunity and political power. Thomas Piketty took aim at the first of these in his Capital, an overnight publishing sensation in which he argued that wealth inequality was high and would inevitably increase. Even though unequally distributed wealth contributes to the other three inequalities, the issue of wealth inequality has not attracted politicians’ sustained attention. In part that inattention is due to statistical and logical flaws in the Picketty study, many of which he has graciously conceded. But my guess is that politicians are shying away from the discussion because they know the solution, but fear voters’ wrath if they implement it: raise inheritance taxes to prevent the dear departed from perpetuating wealth-inequality by willing their assets to the winners of the sperm lottery.