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Thomas Piketty: Why France’s ‘rock star economist’ still wants to squeeze the rich

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/23/thomas-piketty-why-frances-rock-star-economist-still-wants-to-squeeze-the-rich

Promoting his new book, the Frenchman is happy to talk Marx and money, but less forthcoming about a domestic violence claim that has resurfaced

Seven years ago a French economist named Thomas Piketty published a book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It was 700 pages long and featured in-depth empirical analysis of various historical tax systems, amounting to a forensic argument against widening inequality. You wouldn’t say that it spelled international bestseller, and yet it has sold 2.5 million copies to date.

Hailed as a modern successor to Karl Marx’s monumental Capital, it rejuvenated radical leftwing critiques of capitalism and earned Piketty (it rhymes with spaghetti) the epithet of “rock star” economist. Seldom has a media cliche been more misleading.

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