The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

Joseph E. Stiglitz

W. W. Norton & Company, Apr 8, 2013 - Business & Economics - 523 pages

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.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - RajivC - LibraryThing

This book by Joseph Stiglitz is a challenging and important read. He has written the book with the United States of America in mind; however, the lessons are universal. Inequality threatens our world ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - GlennBell - LibraryThing

This is an excellent book on economics. I learned a lot and found it interesting. The author is highly knowledgeable and is good at explaining complex ideas in understandable language.

Contents

• Preface to the Paperback edition: ix
• Preface: xxxvii
• acknowledgments: lix
• Chapter: 1
• Chapter: 35
• Chapter Three: 65
• Chapter Four: 104
• Chapter Five: 148
• Chapter: 183
• Chapter Seven: 234
• Chapter Eight: 259
• Chapter Nine: 298
• Chapter: 332
• notes: 365
• index: 503

About the author

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the best-selling author of 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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
• Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013
• ISBN: 0393345068, 9780393345063
• Length: 523 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Economic Conditions; Political Science / Political Economy; Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy; Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity