Technological change and globalisation explain the rising wealth of the super-rich; in the developing world, these trends have pulled millions out of poverty but automation and cheap labour abroad mean today's tycoons have to surrender a smaller portion of their profits than they once did. Freeland is not the sort of know-nothing who wishes globalisation had never happened. She declares herself a capitalist and recognises the rise in living standards brought about by these trends. This good sense makes it all the more surprising when she aligns herself with Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget chief, who told Freeland that politics should check these economic forces: "Instead of leaning against the wind, we have been putting a little more wind in the sails of rising inequality."

Governments put wind in those sails for a reason. Economically, Britain was a more equal society before the Thatcherite revolution of the Eighties. It was also less meritocratic and poorer. That was in part due to punitive and self-defeating rates of taxation. Lowering the top rate of income tax, from 83 per cent to 60 per cent in 1979 and to 40 per cent by Nigel Lawson in 1988, was good economics: wealth creation was incentivised and jobs followed. Of course, this revolution was not uniquely British and as a result, today's plutocrats are more likely to be self-made than their mid-20th-century counterparts. Freeland barely pauses to celebrate this fact.

 For much of Plutocrats, Freeland is too busy gawping at the planes, parties and Alpine pow-wows that characterise the lives of the very wealthy to consider whether something should be done about this new elite. Today's inequality is the product of rising global prosperity, and assuming legal and political institutions are strong enough to withstand the potentially corrupting pressure of extreme wealth, there is nothing wrong with financial inequality per se. Policymakers needn't read Plutocrats. When it comes to income discrepancies, they should heed the advice of the White Rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Don't just do something. Stand there."