But the most troubling finding is how sharply the rich have lost faith in democracy across the West as a whole. In the 1990s, the wealthy backed democracy more strongly than any other income group in America and Europe. That has turned upside down. The poor are now democracy’s strongest fans, the rich its biggest sceptics. In 1995, just 5 per cent of wealthy Americans believed army rule would be a good thing. By 2014 that had more than tripled. An even higher share of upper-income millennials support autocracy. People tend to form political beliefs in their early years and then stick with them
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