Thomas Piketty

The work. Centuries of wealth and income inequality reconstructed from tax data, the claim that returns on capital outrun growth, and Capital in the Twenty-First Century, an economics book that sold like a novel.

The case for. He built the World Inequality Database with Saez and Zucman and put inequality back at the center of the discipline.

The case against. The committee is wary of political lightning rods, the theory in Capital took heavy fire, and the data work is shared with co-authors who would split a prize.

The KmikeyM angle. Piketty says capital compounds faster than labor; KmikeyM turned his labor into capital and sold it to shareholders, which is either the fix or the problem.