Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz: The People Who Break the Rules Have Raked in Huge Profits and Wealth and It’s Sickening Our Politics

The following is taken from a transcript of Joseph Stiglitz’s remarks to the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles on September 8, 2013, which is shown in the video above. He has a lot more to say in the film than just what’s below. And there are some things he doesn’t say. While Stiglitz rails against inequality, lot of Democrats, such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, have a 100 percent record of voting to increase inequality, by voting for income redistribution scams like free trade treaties, weakening Wall Street regulations, and privatization scams.

“I’m an economist — I study how economies work and don’t work. It’s been clear to me that our economy has been sick for a long time. One of the reasons it’s been so sick is inequality and I decided to write an article and a book about it.

Two years ago, I wrote an article for Vanity Fair called, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” which really got to the gist of it. For too long, the hardworking and rule-abiding had seen their paychecks shrink or stay the same, while the rule-breakers raked in huge profits and wealth. It made our economy sick and our politics sick, too.

You all know the facts: while the productivity of America’s workers has soared, wages have stagnated. You’ve worked hard — since 1979, your output per hour has increased 40 percent, but pay has barely increased. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent take home more than 20 percent of the national income.

We have become the advanced country with the highest level of inequality, with the greatest divide between the rich and the poor. We use to pride ourselves — we were the country in which everyone was middle class. Now that middle class is shrinking and suffering.

The Great Recession made things worse. Some say that the recession ended in 2009. But for most Americans, that’s simply wrong: 95 percent of the gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the upper 1 percent. The rest — the 99 percent — never really recovered.”

Now check out the video for more of what Professor Stiglitz has to say about inequality and how it is destroying our economy and our democracy.

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