Stiglitz says the protest movement sweeping his organization and many others is “hitting the ground” and recalls his history as a civil rights protester in the 1960s. “This may seem hard to believe, but I was there at the March on Washington in August 1963, with Martin Luther King,” he says. And I was there when he gavei have a dream'Speech.' It had an impact on his thinking as a young man, he says, “and it had a tremendous impact on the direction of our country, at least for a while.”
This sombre tone befits much of Stiglitz's career, as the left-leaning economist and author finds himself in increasingly lonely company: the pro-capitalist progressive. Polls widely indicate discontent with capitalism among some Millennials and more Gen Z, exemplified by the surprise electoral successes of the past decade by so-called democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. But Stiglitz always emphasized that socialism was not the solution; Instead, a well-regulated capitalism is urgently needed. At the same time, he criticized the hard-right turn in American political and business culture, to the point that he questioned the influence of Reverend King's famous speech.
“Neoliberal capitalism is devouring itself,” says Stiglitz. luckUnder the pretext that it rewards dishonest people and leads to a lack of trust. It is not sustainable, in his view, because it places self-interest above any sense of community and the broader interests of society. “We see that it is starting to deteriorate now,” he adds.
He argues that countries everywhere have done little to protect against the neoliberal shift, and those countries that have done little to protect their citizens from the market have seen the rise of populism and authoritarianism. He clearly fears Trump's return in November. I think it would be terrible for the economy. Worse still, for our basic rights.” But he also says the Americans are underestimating the international reaction. He says business people abroad have expressed “a kind of nervousness” about Trump's re-election. “And the closer we get to the election, the more nervous they say they feel.”
Freedom for wolves
The title of Stiglitz's book is an implicit response to one of Reagan's favorite thought leaders, the Austrian economist. Friedrich Hayek“Who preached the efficiency of free markets above all else in his landmark work.”The road to slaveryAs Stiglitz wrote, freedom has more than one meaning, and in twenty-first-century America there is “liberty for the wolves and death for the sheep.” (Stiglitz notes that this is a paraphrase of Isaiah Berlinan anti-communist, pro-capitalist liberal intellectual from the Cold War era).
In his book, Stiglitz argues that the country's neoliberal shift since the days of Ronald Reagan has pushed the American Dream out of reach for everyone, especially Generation Z. luck The media loves to tell “beautiful stories” similar to those of 19th century young adult novelists Horatio Alger: The reward of moving up, reinforcing the idea that anyone can achieve success if they work hard. “But from a social science point of view, the question is: what is the probability, which is very rare,” he adds, citing data indicating worse outcomes for the United States than for any other advanced economy. “I would say it's a legend.”
But the American Dream is also about freedom, which includes freedom from harm and the freedom to live up to your potential. “And again, America is doing much worse,” he says, specifically pointing to the epidemic of gun violence gripping the country. “The important freedom is freedom from fear. From a very early age, we tell our children to be afraid.”
He adds: We must listen to our children: “The difference between what they were told and reality is very large.” He adds that when they enter the workforce, raised on notions of the American Dream, “they know that it's going to be really hard to own a home…and they know that the average college graduate has about $30,000, of which $40,000 is in student debt, so it's going to be A noose around their necks for a long time.
Stiglitz refuses to address the issue of excessive police brutality in dispersing Colombia's protests, citing the long tradition of peaceful protests from Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, but also the tension with civil disobedience that may be justified for a specific reason. . “I “He is aware of the tensions between different freedoms,” he says, adding that he usually wants a civil dialogue that leads to a peaceful solution.
Traffic light duress
As for the solution, Stiglitz uses the word “coercion” in his book, but he offers a metaphor that may be useful: the stop signal. “You can't go through an intersection when it's red. And if you do, you'll see all kinds of consequences. You'll get arrested. So it's unequivocally coercive. But in New York, or London, if you don't have stoplights, you can't Move at all and you will have a dead end.
when luck He talks about the biggest economic stagnation happening these days, which is the housing market, and Stiglitz points to his previous work.
Although he cautioned that he had not studied the current housing market closely, he had studied mortgage financing, a “strange system” in which the government takes on roughly 90% of the risk through underwriting, and which has not changed since the great crash of 2008. To me, ( Is that) in the 16 years since then, we haven't really fixed the financial part. We still have a system in which much of the profits go to the financial sector, but the government still bears most of the risks. In other words, if it was a stop sign, it might flash yellow without directing traffic efficiently at all.