Inequality is a choice.
The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story—the U.S. today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent. Education, housing, and health care—essential ingredients for individual success—are growing ever more expensive. Deeply rooted structural discrimination continues to hold down women and people of color, and more than one-fifth of all American children now live in poverty. These trends are on track to become even worse in the future.
Some economists claim that today’s bleak conditions are inevitable consequences of market outcomes, globalization, and technological progress. If we want greater equality, they argue, we have to sacrifice growth. This is simply not true. American inequality is the result of misguided structural rules that actually constrict economic growth. We have stripped away worker protections and family support systems, created a tax system that rewards short-term gains over long-term investment, offered a de facto public safety net to too-big-to-fail financial institutions, and chosen monetary and fiscal policies that promote wealth over full employment.
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“Stiglitz realizes that deepening inequality in our country is not an unlucky act of nature, but a consequence of the policies we have chosen. This lively book suggests a whole menu of policy changes to move us toward a more widely shared prosperity.”
— Robert Solow, winner of the Nobel Prize
“The secret truth about economic inequality in America: once you look at the issue this way, it’s hard to think of it any other way.”
— Time“An aggressive blueprint for rewriting thirty-five years of policies [that] have led to a vast concentration of wealth among the richest Americans and an increasingly squeezed middle class.”
— New York TimesBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize–winning economist and the bestselling author of The Price of Inequality, Freefall, and Globalization and Its Discontents. He is a columnist for the New York Times and Project Syndicate and has written for Vanity Fair, Politico, the Atlantic, and Harper’s. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.