In a Guardian article, Owen Jones interviews French economist Thomas Piketty, who labels François Hollande’s tenure a “disaster,” discusses the incredible inequity of Middle Eastern finances and comments on the virtues of both the free market and of revolution. An excerpt: 

“The west’s general relationship with the Middle East – ‘the most unequal region in the world,’ he says – is one that troubles him, not least because it exposes grotesque inequalities. ‘Take Egypt: the total budget for education for 100 million people is 100 times less than the oil revenue for a few dozen people in Qatar. And then in London and in Paris we are happy to have these people buying football clubs and buying apartments, and then we are surprised that the youths in the Middle East don’t take very seriously our democracy and social justice.’

Although some on the right have assailed him as a dangerous red, I put it to him that he is not as radical as he is portrayed. He has written that he was ‘vaccinated for life against the conventional but lazy rhetoric of anti-capitalism’; he opposed the introduction of a 35-hour week in France, and the Wall Street Journal even called him ‘a neoliberal economist who sees many virtues in market forces but favours government redistribution to smooth out some of the market’s excesses.’ He looks bemused. ‘I don’t live in the cold war. Some people maybe still live in the cold war, but this is their problem, not mine.’ He unashamedly believes in ‘market forces.’ arguing there is no ‘war of religion’ between left and right in the modern era. But he defends his radicalism, arguing that a global wealth tax makes ‘property temporary, rather than permanent,’ which he describes as ‘a permanent revolution, a very substantial change to the traditional capitalist system.’

Though Piketty supported François Hollande’s presidential bid in 2012, he is contemptuous of the French president. ‘He’s been a disaster,’ is his unequivocal response, clarifying that he was ‘more against Sarkozy than [he] was for Hollande.'”