French economist Thomas Piketty
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Would Bernie Sanders have won? French economist Thomas Piketty seems to think so.

The author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a New York Times best-seller and the most-bought book in the history of Harvard University Press, has published a paper that uses exit polling data to argue that embracing economic populism would power the left toward huge electoral wins.

The paper is called “Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict” and it’s a book-length 174 pages with references and charts.

Piketty says that both parties now appeal to elites in America, with high-education elites liking the left, while wealthy elites support the right—though he points out that this is changing in the era of Trump, with polling showing that wealthy suburbs are now a danger zone for Republicans.

It’s dense stuff—not the sort of thing the “low education, low income voters” he writes about are likely to read:

“I argue that this structural evolution can contribute to explain rising inequality and the lack of democratic response to […]

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