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.

Autorentext
Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prizewinning economist and the best-selling author of People, Power, and Profits; Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited; The Price of Inequality; and Freefall. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton, chief economist of the World Bank, and now teaches at Columbia University and is chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

Zusammenfassung
A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality bythe Nobel Prize-winning economist.