The top 1 percent have the best houses the best educations the best doctors & the best lifestyles but there is one thing that money doesnt seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn
- too late. In this timely book Joseph Stiglitz identifies three major causes of our predicament: that markets dont work the way they are supposed to (being neither efficient nor stable); how political systems fail to correct the shortcomings of the market; & how our current economic & political systems are fundamentally unfair. He focuses chiefly on the gross inequality to which these systems give rise but also explains how inextricably interlinked they are. Providing evidence that investment
- not austerity
- is vital for productivity & offering realistic solutions for levelling the playing field & increasing social mobility Stiglitz argues that reform of our economic & political systems is not just fairer but is the only way to make markets work as they really should.