The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the...
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The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn - too late. In this timely book, Joseph Stiglitz identifies three major causes of our predicament: that markets don't work the way they are supposed to (being neither efficient nor stable); how political systems fail to correct the shortcomings of the market; and how our current economic and political systems are fundamentally unfair. He focuses chiefly on the gross inequality to which these systems give rise, but also explains how inextricably interlinked they are. Providing evidence that investment - not austerity - is vital for productivity, and offering realistic solutions for levelling the playing field and increasing social mobility, Stiglitz argues that reform of our economic and political systems is not just fairer, but is the only way to make markets work as they really should.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781846146930 (1846146933)
Publish date: June 28th 2012
Publisher: Allen Lane
Pages no: 448
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Business,
Economics,
Politics,
Sociology,
Social Science,
Social Issues,
Social Movements,
Social Justice,
Poverty
Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel prize economist, a rich person, and he is not wanting complete equality. No. He wants less inequality as he see this as destabilizing society that lead to social unrest and disasters. So, he write books. He tried to tell normal people how the system is cheating people. H...
It's dense, as you'd expect. But his argument is solid, and well worth familiarizing yourself with.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a 2001 Nobel Prize winning economist, in this book targets numerous examples of economic activity/policy what lead to consequences incompatible with America's self image as the "land of opportunity." All through the book he points out needless inefficiencies that are embedded in...
The text is dense and the writing occasionally dry but Stiglitz explains complex economic issues with great clarity and thoughtful analysis. Anyone seeking an understanding of the developments that lead to the economic collapse of 2008 and the "Great Recession" will find this book enlightening.