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Stiglitz on Economic Inequality

In partnership with:
Harvard Book Store
Date and time
Monday, April 20, 2015

In The Great Divide, Joseph E. Stiglitz expands on the diagnosis he offered in his best-selling book The Price of Inequality and suggests ways to counter America’s growing problem. With his signature blend of clarity and passion, Stiglitz argues that inequality is a choice—the cumulative result of unjust policies and misguided priorities. Gathering his writings for popular outlets including Vanity Fair and the New York Times, Stiglitz exposes in full America's inequality: its dimensions, its causes, and its consequences for the nation and for the world. From Reagan-era policies to the Great Recession and its long aftermath, Stiglitz delves into the irresponsible policies—deregulation, tax cuts, and tax breaks for the 1 percent—that are leaving many Americans farther and farther beyond and turning the American dream into an ever more unachievable myth. With formidable yet accessible economic insight, he urges us to embrace real solutions: increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy; offering more help to the children of the poor; investing in education, science, and infrastructure; helping out homeowners instead of banks; and, most importantly, doing more to restore the economy to full employment. Stiglitz also draws lessons from Scandinavia, Singapore, and Japan, and he argues against the tide of unnecessary, destructive austerity that is sweeping across Europe. Ultimately, Stiglitz believes our choice is not between growth and fairness; with the right policies, we can choose both. His complaint is not so much about capitalism as such, but how twenty-first-century capitalism has been perverted. His is a call to confront America's economic inequality as the political and moral issue that it is. If we reinvest in people and pursue the other policies that he describes, America can live up to the shared dream of a more prosperous, more equal society. [Photo Credit: By Simon Cunningham](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lendingmemo/11942712503/in/photolist-jckwmg-qFmenb-oX3g7C-pSsrNB-qrbJBb-g71SpA-2u4aL6-7veker-qJLtyC-p5cV1Q-qpKJsK-qFncAU-pCePef-qtUr1y-6SLgow-qx59A5-5Zavff-7nSQGU-6SG5x6-p73j5k-5Z5XyV-pLQTVx-6SM3sH-qt3MF8-dRTfQ8-qK4Nht-qrcS7N-qgEsT7-6SL8qf-8tCDCQ-oDYXGK-kmJAkG-bWAzwc-oHnL38-87CPtH-6SLAxu-3pNxqp-dpN1CB-fAk1UZ-dBjFpg-aSqw2a-7BVqXG-5kJguG-dQTyck-4TsueN-6SGiga-aqe4GL-igvPYh-32Y5v2-bWCco8 "")

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Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, witnessed the policymaking process firsthand as chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. He has written several books on globalization and global issues, including *The Three Trillion Dollar War* (with Linda Bilmes), *Making Globalization Work*, and *Globalization and Its Discontents*. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
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Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is a journalist, author, economist and eminent public intellectual. Mr. Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of *The American Prospect* magazine, and senior fellow at the New York think-tank Demos. A longtime columnist for *BusinessWeek*, he continues to write for *Huffington Post* and the *Boston Globe*. He was a co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute and serves on its board. His magazine writing has appeared in *The New York Times Magazine* and *The New York Times Book Review*, *The Atlantic*, *The New Republic*, *The New Yorker*, *Dissent*, *Foreign Affairs*, *Columbia Journalism Review*, and *Harvard Business Review*. He has contributed major articles to *The New England Journal of Medicine* as a national policy correspondent. He contributes columns to *The New York Times international edition*. Mr. Kuttner has served as national staff writer on *The Washington Post*, chief investigator of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, economics editor of *The New Republic*, and assistant to renowned journalist I.F. Stone. Educated at Oberlin College, The London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley, he has taught at Brandeis, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Harvard's Institute of Politics. He is the author of eight books, including the 2008 *New York Times* bestseller, *Obama's Challenge: American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency*. Bob's latest work is *A Presidency in Peril*, dealing with the financial crisis and the related political and regulatory battles of President Obama's first year. A fascinating and incisive look at both the promise that Barak Obama brought when assuming the mantle of the presidency and the factors that have served to tamp down that promise.
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