Like many Western academics on a tight budget when faced with poor and nonsensical statistics outside Western nations, Piketty takes European indicators and extrapolates them on to such countries to draw global conclusions. This ignores the fact that 90 percent of the world population lives in developing countries and former Soviet states, whose inhabitants produce and hold their capital in the informal sector, that is to say, outside of official statistics.

 This flaw has implications that go far beyond mere accounting: It turns out that the kinds of violence that erupted in places like Tahrir Square, Egypt, in 2011 occur where according to our field studies capital plays a decisive if hidden role that Eurocentric analysis cannot perceive.

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