Joseph Stiglitz: Of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%

by Daniel Becker

This is an interview of Joseph Stiglitz on Democracy Now regarding his article in the current Vanity Fair.  He discuss the issue of income inequality, taxes, etc and how it has set us up to be less of a land of oportunity than what old Europe was.

A few quotes:

The question was, if people were getting rewards for contributing to our society, a theory that was in the 19th century called “marginal-productivity theory,” then you could say, “OK, those who contribute more should get more.” But what we saw in that crisis was that these titans of the financial industry got mega-bonuses while their companies were making mega-losses.

And with this one percent getting so much, there’s only one place really to get that extra revenue. The good news is it’s relatively easy. You have 25 percent—almost 25 percent of the income in the upper one percent, you raise their taxes by a few percentage points, and you get an awful lot of money.

This raises a very important point that I raise in my article, which is that much of the wealth of this one percent comes not from hard work, not from innovation, but from good investments in Washington, investing in political capital.