SALON
Tuesday, Feb 16, 2016 04:50 PM EST
"Sanders’s success today shows that much
of America is tired of rising inequality"
Sophia Tesfaye
Thomas Piketty (Credit: AP/Janerik Henriksson)
In a new
op-ed published in the Guardian
on Tuesday, famed French economist and author of
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas
Piketty credits Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with
waking the larger American political establishment up to the problem of
rising income inequality and channelling the Democratic electorate’s
righteous outrage. Piketty says that Sanders’ campaign proves that a
leader like Sanders—if not Sanders himself—“could one day soon win the
U.S. presidential elections and change the face of the country.”
“Because
he is facing the Clinton machine, as well as the conservatism of
mainstream media, Sanders might not win the race,” Piketty observes,
but, “in many respects, we are witnessing the end of the
politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of
Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections.”
Both
former president Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama have failed to
even attempt real tax reform, allowing for inequality to run rampant,
according to Piketty. “Sanders’ success today” however, Piketty argues,
“shows that much of America is tired of rising inequality and these
so-called political changes, and intends to revive both a progressive
agenda and the American tradition of egalitarianism”:
Sanders
makes clear he wants to restore progressive taxation and a higher
minimum wage ($15 an hour). To this he adds free healthcare and higher
education in a country where inequality in access to education has
reached unprecedented heights, highlighting a gulf standing between the
lives of most Americans, and the soothing meritocratic speeches
pronounced by the winners of the system.
“Meanwhile,”
Piketty notes, “the Republican party sinks into a hyper-nationalist,
anti-immigrant and anti-Islam discourse (even though Islam isn’t a great
religious force in the country), and a limitless glorification of the
fortune amassed by rich white people.” And Sanders’ rival, Hillary
Clinton, is now “just another heiress of the Reagan-Clinton-Obama
political regime.”
Despite observing that “the judges appointed
under Reagan and Bush have lifted any legal limitation on the influence
of private money in politics,” Picketty is not resigned to doom, instead
crediting the Sanders campaign with offering a real counter to fight
unlimited campaign contributions rather than succumbing to its power.
“New
forms of political mobilization and crowdfunding can prevail and push
America into a new political cycle,” Picketty wrote. “We are far from
gloomy prophecies about the end of history.”
Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's Deputy Politics Editor. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.
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