Impact of Social Sciences – Thomas Piketty’s Capital changed the global discussion about inequality because of its great data – now make it open.

"French economist Thomas Piketty has written a bestseller that reached number one on Amazon.com despite competing with books such as Game of Thrones. Capital in the Twenty-First Century has put a spotlight on the widening gap between the rich and the rest. It is a tremendous achievement to ignite the public discussion around inequality, especially in the US. The book is so promising, some argue 'Nobel-prize worthy', because it uses historic data such as tax records – contrary to ungrounded economic theory. Professor Piketty shows in great detail how inequality evolved over the past 300 years. He writes '[the] debate about the distribution of wealth has long been based on an abundance of prejudice and a paucity of fact.'  This is the great power of data: it undermines purely ideological arguments. As we shape the world’s politics with data, transparency and open access are paramount. Even though the data behind the book is public, it is not open. We would love to see a clear licence, better dissemination and simpler formats to enable everyone to engage in the debate around growing inequality.  Thomas Piketty’s opus magnum includes three major contributions: [1] Piketty collected and analysed historic data and shows in great detail how inequality evolved over the past 300 years. [2] He develops the theoretical ideas of why capitalism has a tendency towards the concentration of wealth and how economies will evolve over time. [3] As an 'utopian' solution he proposes a progressive global tax on capital (=wealth) ..."