At the heart of Piketty’s book is his inequation ‘r > g’: the rate of return on capital (r) is typically greater than the rate of economic growth (g). But does Piketty help us to understand the conditions under which r can be reduced? Hardly at all. Does he help us understand why ‘r > g’? No. He regards r as being in practice ‘exogenous’. And this is why he doesn’t in any serious way enter into the terrain of thinking about how things might be other than bad if we were to reduce g to zero; that is, if we were to accept or deliberately embrace a post-growth future. Nor does he seriously consider what would happen if the structure of (the ownership of) the capital stock, of wealth, were to be altered, for example by a massive increase in the proportion of the economy that was not-for-profit. A radically diversified – or, alternatively, more state-owned – capital ownership base could mean that a much higher r than g would diminish inequality.