Economist Has Convincing Theory on How Extreme Inequality Creates Extremist Violence [View all]

[Sherman A1]

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/30/economist-has-convincing-theory-how-extreme-inequality-creates-extremist-violence

Influential French economist Thomas Piketty is begging important questions this week after positing a theory that the rise of the Islamic State (or ISIS) can be attributed, at least in part, to extreme regional inequality in the Middle East fueled largely by oil wealth.

Piketty argues in a column published Le Monde last week and translated by the Washington Post on Monday that the concentration of wealth in the hands of just a few petro-monarchies has made the region the "most unequal on the planet."

In those states, Piketty says, the have-nots, including women and refugees, are often kept in a state of "semi-slavery." This, combined with a series of foreign interventions, have created what he described as a "powder keg" for terrorism.

The Post notes that "Piketty is particularly scathing when he blames the inequality of the region, and the persistence of oil monarchies that perpetuate it, on the West."