Description

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A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.

The top 1 percent of Americans control some 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. But as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in this best-selling critique of the economic status quo, this level of inequality is not inevitable. Rather, in recent years well-heeled interests have compounded their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism and making America no longer the land of opportunity that it once was. They have made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while crippling growth, distorting key policy debates, and fomenting a divided society. Stiglitz not only shows how and why America’s inequality is bad for our economy but also exposes the effects of inequality on our democracy and on our system of justice while examining how monetary policy, budgetary policy, and globalization have contributed to its growth. With characteristic insight, he diagnoses our weakened state while offering a vision for a more just and prosperous future.

About the Author

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Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize–winning economist and the best-selling author of People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent; Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Age of Trump; The Price of Inequality; and Freefall. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton, chief economist of the World Bank, named by Time as one of the 100 most influential individuals in the world, and now teaches at Columbia University and is chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

Praise For…

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Immensely important.
— Dante Chinni - Washington Post

The single most comprehensive counterargument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories…Stiglitz’s contribution…to the public debate cannot be overestimated.
— Thomas B. Edsall - New York Times Book Review

A model of clarity.
— Jared Bernstein - Rolling Stone

A definitive examination of inequality’s effects not only on the economy, but on democracy and globalization.
— The Daily Beast

An impassioned argument backed by rigorous economic analysis.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Stiglitz’s ideas in this book will prompt wide discussion and debate.
— Booklist