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

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Categories: Business & Money, Politics & Social Sciences

The Price of Inequality (2012, W. W. Norton) is Joseph E. Stiglitz's argument that the inequality of the United States is not the inevitable result of markets but the product of politics and policy. He shows how the top 1 percent gain through rent-seeking, using monopoly power, subsidies, tax breaks, lax regulation and financial practices to take a larger share of existing wealth rather than create it. Stiglitz contends that this slows growth and erodes democracy, and proposes reforms for a fairer economy.

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• Bill Gates: “I have mixed feelings about The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz. Stiglitz's contributions are important in that he really does a good job of articulating the issues of inequality and the economic factors that underlie it.”