I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.
        Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground

In the 1960s, Nobel laureate economist Simon Kuznets conducted rigorous empirical analyses to conclude that capitalism inevitability decreases inequality. The elegant bell-shaped Kuznets' curve shows inequality at first rising with capitalism and then falling as countries reach advanced stages of development. More than fifty years on, in post-2008-recession America, 42-year-old French economist Thomas Piketty has become talk of the town for using Kuznets' methods – and turning his conclusion on its head.

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, more popularly known as PAX East, a gaming convention that offers a place for gamers to meet, try the newest gaming technologies, and attend panels (usually held by game developers/journalists and the like) about the future of the industry.