‘OUR POLICIES AND POLITICS SHAPE INCOME INEQUALITY’

“In the years since the financial crisis, [Columbia University economist Joseph] Stiglitz has been among the loudest and most influential public intellectuals decrying the costs of inequality, and making the case for how we can use government policy to deal with it. In his 2012 book, The Price of Inequality, and in a series of articles and Op-Eds for Project Syndicate, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, which have now been collected in The Great Divide, Stiglitz has made the case that the rise in inequality in the US, far from being the natural outcome of market forces, has been profoundly shaped by “our policies and our politics,” with disastrous effects on society and the economy as a whole. In a recent report for the Roosevelt Institute called Rewriting the Rules, Stiglitz has laid out a detailed list of reforms that he argues will make it possible to create “an economy that works for everyone.”

James Surowiecki, “Why the Rich Are So Much Richer,” in the New York Review, September 24, 2015, pp: 32-36.