More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe
Piketty showed in Capital that most modern work about the trends in economic inequality was flawed. We usually think of the industrial revolution and modern era as periods where power and wealth became much more fairly distributed. However, if you go far back enough into the records, as he did, you can see a clear trend of concentration of wealth even now in the current system. The trend was briefly disrupted by the two world wars which were so destructive to our economies. The necessary reconstruction led to massive wealth redistribution and evened the playing field somewhat.<p>It seems that the graphs in this tweet are another confirmation of Piketty's observation.