The Price of Excessive Inequality

Quote of the Day, July 9, 2012

The level of inequality in the United States has clearly reached this ‘excessive’ level. It has more inequality than any of the other advanced industrial countries. Indeed, the growth of inequality in recent years has meant that while G.D.P. per capita has increased, income of the median household has essentially stagnated. Trickle-down economics has not worked.

Even more disturbing is that the United States has become the country with the least equality of opportunity among the advanced countries for which there is data, and this includes many in ‘old Europe.’ This means that a child’s life prospects are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in these other countries; and it also means that we are not making use of one of our most valuable resources, our young people.

– Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on America’s ‘excessive’ level of inequality, as printed in the New York Times’  “Inside the List” by Gregory Cowles.  Stiglitz has a new book, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.