Joseph Stiglitz: No, Spiraling Inequality Isn't Inevitable

[xchrom]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24830-joseph-stiglitz-no-spiraling-inequality-isnt-inevitable



***SNIP

Last week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz took to the opinion pages of The New York Times to argue that there’s no such thing as “natural” market forces — markets, and their outcomes, are determined by public policies — by the rules established by governments.

Stiglitz wrote that inequality is anything but “inevitable”:

We don’t need to have this much inequality in America.

Our current brand of capitalism is an ersatz capitalism. For proof of this go back to our response to the Great Recession, where we socialized losses, even as we privatized gains. Perfect competition should drive profits to zero, at least theoretically, but we have monopolies and oligopolies making persistently high profits. C.E.O.s enjoy incomes that are on average 295 times that of the typical worker, a much higher ratio than in the past, without any evidence of a proportionate increase in productivity.

If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics. People get tired of hearing about Scandinavian success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality.

Inequality Is Not Inevitable
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/inequality-is-not-inevitable/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&

AN insidious trend has developed over this past third of a century. A country that experienced shared growth after World War II began to tear apart, so much so that when the Great Recession hit in late 2007, one could no longer ignore the fissures that had come to define the American economic landscape. How did this “shining city on a hill” become the advanced country with the greatest level of inequality?

One stream of the extraordinary discussion set in motion by Thomas Piketty’s timely, important book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has settled on the idea that violent extremes of wealth and income are inherent to capitalism. In this scheme, we should view the decades after World War II — a period of rapidly falling inequality — as an aberration.

This is actually a superficial reading of Mr. Piketty’s work, which provides an institutional context for understanding the deepening of inequality over time. Unfortunately, that part of his analysis received somewhat less attention than the more fatalistic-seeming aspects.

Over the past year and a half, The Great Divide, a series in The New York Times for which I have served as moderator, has also presented a wide range of examples that undermine the notion that there are any truly fundamental laws of capitalism. The dynamics of the imperial capitalism of the 19th century needn’t apply in the democracies of the 21st. We don’t need to have this much inequality in America.

[Enthusiast]

1. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[WillyT]

2. K & R !!!

[Octafish]

3. Stiglitz would make an excellent president.

Brilliant Mind. Check.
Nobel Prize winner. Check.
Man of Integrity. Check.

The complete package.

[todmorden]

4. no Marx for Liberal thinking

Stiglitz writes,in the concluding section of "The Price of Inequality" (p.359 Penguine edition.) -

"The political and economic reform agenda in this chapter assumes that while market forces play some role in the creation of our current levels of inequality, MARKET FORCES ARE ULTIMATELY SHAPED BY POLITICS."

Duuuhhh........... He obviously doesn't know the first thing about Marx's analysis, or the concept of the "ruling ideology" as outlined by Marx.

MONEY is what makes the world go round - not well-meaning politicians (or their worthy ideas come to that.) Back to school Stiglitz.

[niyad]

5. welcome to du--does your screen name refer to that lovely "edible todmorden"?