PIKETTY ON FIRE: Bookstores Scramble For Copies Of Wealth Epic

[okaawhatever]

9. For those who have friends waiting for a copy, or whose interest is piqued by the Piketty book

please recommend (and please read) Joseph Stiglitz' The Price of Inequality. Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winning economist, winner of John Bates Clark medal and professor at Columbia. Here are excerpts from Stiglitz' writings:

Stiglitz succinctly summarized his own argument in a recent online column: “Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset — its people — is not being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income, use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth. . . . Most importantly, America’s inequality is undermining its values and identity. With inequality reaching such extremes, it is not surprising that its effects are manifest in every public decision, from the conduct of monetary policy to budgetary allocations. America has become a country not ‘with justice for all,’ but rather with favoritism for the rich and justice for those who can afford it — so evident in the foreclosure crisis, in which the big banks believed that they were too big not only to fail, but also to be held accountable.”

It is not uncontrollable technological and social change that has produced a two-tier society, Stiglitz argues, but the exercise of political power by moneyed interests over legislative and regulatory processes. “While there may be underlying economic forces at play,” he writes, “politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.” But politics, he insists, is subject to change.


While everyone's interest is piqued on this topic let's help to educate.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson; “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class”*
Lawrence Lessig ;“Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It”
Timothy Noah “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It”

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland*
The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality by Branko Milanovic*

*Considered 3 must-read books by Oxfam

Recommended reading list by non-profit group www.inequality.org. (a group under the Institute for Policy Studies)
http://inequality.org/books-inequality/
includes all above mentioned books plus more

Free reports by Institute for Policy Studies:

Restaurant Industry Pay, Taxpayers Double Burden
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/restaurant_industry_pay

Wall Street Bonuses and the Minimum Wage
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/wall_street_bonuses_and_the_minimum_wage

Articles on Inequality from the Inequality Institute

The 'Makers' and the 'Takers'
http://inequality.org/makers-takers/

A Better Yardstick for Measuring Inequality
http://inequality.org/yardstick-measuring-inequality/

America’s Last Throwback to Plutocracy 1.0
http://inequality.org/americas-throwback-plutocacy-10/
(About heiress Bunny Mellon)

List of articles:
http://inequality.org/t/news/