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Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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There are two visions of America a half century from now. One is of a society more divided between the haves and the have-nots, a country in which the rich live in gated communities, send their children to expensive schools, and have access to first-rate medical care. Meanwhile, the rest live in a world marked by insecurity, at best mediocre education, and in effect rationed health care--they hope and pray they don't get seriously sick. At ..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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1bb7048
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decisions were often made because of ideology and politics. As a result many wrong-headed actions were taken, ones that did not solve the problem at hand but that fit with the interests or beliefs of the people in power.
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politics
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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6a0ade0
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Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money.
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politics
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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369b008
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In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by pay..
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money
extrinsic-rewards
teachers
inequality
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The facts shouldn't get in the way of a pleasant fantasy.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The U.S. incarceration rate is the world's highest and some nine to ten times that of many European countries. Almost 1 in 100 American adults is behind bars.61 Some U.S. states spend as much on their prisons as they do on their universities.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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2b695c8
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I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Sovi..
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politics
imf
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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0304c3a
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The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made it perfectly clear: sophisticated investors don't, or at least shouldn't, rely on trust. Those who bought the products the banks sold were consenting adults who should have known better.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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c5dd87b
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Part of the reason for this is that much of America's inequality is the result of market distortions, with incentives directed not at creating new wealth but at taking it from others.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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8e22249
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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.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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321a83b
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Ensuring that we have a well-informed public citizenry is important for a well-functioning democracy, and that in turn requires an active and diverse media.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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We were not rich, but my parents had adjusted their lifestyle to their incomes--and in the end that is a big part of the battle.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The financial sector provides ample rewards for those who agree with them: lucrative consultancies, research grants, and the like. The documentary raises a question: Could this have influenced some economists' judgments?
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Growing inequality, combined with a flawed system of campaign finance, risks turning America's legal system into a travesty of justice. Some may still call it the "rule of law," but in today's America the proud claim of "justice for all" is being replaced by the more modest claim of "justice for those who can afford it."
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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100469b
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Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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it's easy to get rich by getting a state asset at a deep discount.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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If economic power in a country becomes too unevenly distributed, political consequences will follow. While we typically think of the rule of law as being designed to protect the weak against the strong, and ordinary citizens against the privileged, those with wealth will use their political power to shape the rule of law to provide a framework within which they can exploit others.9
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The other vision is of a society where the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been narrowed, where there is a sense of shared destiny, a common commitment to opportunity and fairness, where the words "liberty and justice for all" actually mean what they seem to mean, where we take seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emphasizes the importance not just of civil rights but of economic rights, and not just the ri..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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5e52d98
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in today's America the proud claim of "justice for all" is being replaced by the more modest claim of "justice for those who can afford it."
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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df70951
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As we look out at the world, the United States not only has the highest level of inequality among the advanced industrial countries, but the level of its inequality is increasing in absolute terms relative to that in other countries.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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6854e7b
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It's expensive to keep 2.3 million people in prison.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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As medical care has improved, life expectancy has increased--on average, in the United States, by some two years between 1990 and 2000. But for the poorest group of Americans there has been no progress, and for poor women life expectancy has actually been declining.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The United States was the most unequal of the advanced industrial countries in the mid-1980s, and it has maintained that position.92 In fact, the gap between it and many other countries has increased: from the mid-1980s France, Hungary, and Belgium have seen no significant increase in inequality, while Turkey and Greece have actually seen a decrease in inequality. We are now approaching the level of inequality that marks dysfunctional socie..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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ac4b9a9
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Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low-income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these count..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American IOUs. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans--if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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1fc6ed9
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a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards ..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Power--often military power--was at the origin of these inequities.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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What's worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to what they have. This
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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If our economic system leads to so many people without jobs, or with jobs that do not pay a livable wage, dependent on the government for food, it means that our economic system has not worked in the way it should, and then government has to step in.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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Those at the top have managed to design a tax system in which they pay less than their fair share--they pay a lower fraction of their income than do those who are much poorer.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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For now, we simply note that the marked reduction in inequality in the period between 1950 and 1970, was due partly to developments in the markets but even more to government policies, such as the increased access to higher education provided by the GI Bill and the highly progressive tax system enacted during World War II.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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In America the share of national income going to the top .01% (some 16,000 families) has risen from just over 1% in 1980 to almost 5% now--an even bigger slice than the top .01% got in the Gilded Age."9"
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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e26aa7d
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Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics today, as we've seen, suggest otherwise: the chances that a poor or even a middle-class American wi..
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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0d40af9
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The wealth given to the elites and to the bankers seemed to arise out of their ability and willingness to take advantage of others. One
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote."
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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we have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the middle and bottom.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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The rule of law is supposed to protect the weak against the strong and ensure fair treatment for all.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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c7eb7c0
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The irony is that just as markets started delivering more unequal outcomes, tax policy asked less of the top. The top marginal tax rate was lowered from 70 percent under Carter to 28 percent under Reagan; it went up to 39.6 percent under Clinton and down finally to 35 percent under George W. Bush.54 This reduction was supposed to lead to more work and savings, but it didn't.55
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |
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d1240d4
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Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low-income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint.
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Joseph E. Stiglitz |