“If any one theme dominated economic policy debates and research over the past year, it was income inequality. The debate was kicked into high gear when French economist Thomas Piketty‘s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”  became a runaway best seller. (It’s not clear how many people who bought the book actually read much of it.) When President Barack Obama and Pope Francis met, they mostly talked about inequality. Economists, policy makers and think tanks have devoted extensive energy to researching and quantifying these trends, likely keeping it a leading topic in 2015. Here are 14 charts, curated from our coverage at Real Time Economics over the past year, that tell the story of rising inequality.”