Inequality

I finished the book... The Price of Inequality (2012)where Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz... left-leaning but serious scholar to severe prosecutor. for the book has some interesting conclusions, though they are the very opposite to which Professor Stiglitz seeks to lead him.

The lead proposition he wants us to buy is that inequality has drastically increased and is still doing so, not because of globalization or labour-saving technologies, but because the rich and powerful used their influence to rig taxation, expenditures and public policy in general to weaken government, undermine the bargaining power of labour, destroy some of the regulatory framework and bias what was left of it, reduce competition—the heads of the indictment are rolling out in a seemingly endless sequence. The word "inequality" stands for the lot as a whole. This inequality imposes a huge cost on society—hence the title of the book.

Mr. Stiglitz say's, The price of inequality is paid in three ways: in the degradation of the market economy, in the loss of social justice and in the threat to democracy.

The degradation of the economy manifests itself in the incapacity of the market to generate growth and employment. It is true enough that in much of the Western world, growth is sluggish and unemployment very high. But it is totally arbitrary to claim that lack of growth and inequality are causally linked. South Korea has had more than half-century of stellar growth accompanied by extreme inequality of income and wealth as well as in what Mr. Stiglitz more vaguely calls "power". Much the same is true, to a lesser extent, of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, India, Chile and Peru. Western Europe is distinctly more egalitarian than the United States, but does not show any convincing capacity for faster growth and seems clearly less able usefully to employ its population. Japan is as close as any developed country to an equal income distribution, and has had near-zero economic growth for the last two decades. Are all these big and small, developed and undeveloped countries exceptions to the rule Professor Stiglitz asks us to believe in, and if so, what is left of the rule? One might more plausibly interpret the statistics as evidence that growth goes with inequality, stagnation with equality. In fact, however, such a reading of the numbers would be just as questionable as its opposite. This is surely one conclusion Mr. Stiglitz did not mean us to draw. Like it or not "other things are not equal" and it is "all/other things" that tell true stories.

Thanks for the review.

I am constantly amazed at the totally different worlds some of us live in. This prof and me for example.

How we come to two different point of view's is beyond me...it is so clear..