While there is a prevailing attitude that severe income inequality is inevitable, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University doesn't see it that way.
"The problem of inequality is not so much a matter of technical economics. It’s really a problem of practical politics,"
Stiglitz writes in The New York Times.
"The American political system is overrun by money. Economic inequality translates into political inequality, and political inequality yields increasing economic inequality," he argues.
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"Ensuring that those at the top pay their fair share of taxes — ending the special privileges of speculators, corporations and the rich — is both pragmatic and fair. We are not embracing a politics of envy if we reverse a politics of greed."
But it's not just about increasing taxes on the rich, Stiglitz notes. "[It's] also about our children’s access to food and the right to justice for all. If we spent more on education, health and infrastructure, we would strengthen our economy."
Our democracy has been "corrupted" by "political inequities," he explains. "Widening and deepening inequality is not driven by immutable economic laws, but by laws we have written ourselves."
Some economists, such as Larry Summers and Alan Blinder, are concerned about the focus on tearing down the rich rather than on building up the poor.
"Unless one regards envy as a virtue, the primary reason for concern about inequality is that lower- and middle-income workers have too little, not that the rich have too much," Summers, a former top economic adviser to President Obama, writes in the
Financial Times.
"So in judging policies relating to inequality, the criterion should be what their impact will be on the middle class and the poor."
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