Several months before Occupy Wall Street, the Nobel Prize-winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," an
article for Vanity Fair. He returns to the subject in his new book
looking at how inequality is now greater in the United States than any
other industrialized nation. He notes that the six heirs of the Wal-Mart
fortune command wealth equivalent to the entire bottom 30 percent of
American society. "It’s a comment both on how well off the top are and
how poor the bottom are," Stiglitz says. "It’s really emblematic of the
divide that has gotten much worse in our society." On Tuesday, Bloomberg
News reported that pay for the top CEOs on Wall Street increased by
more than 20 percent last year. Meanwhile, census data shows nearly one
in two Americans, or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty or
could be classified as low-income. "United States is the country in the
world with the highest level of inequality [of the advanced industrial
countries], and it’s getting worse," Stiglitz says. "What’s even more
disturbing is we’ve [also] become the country with the least equality of
opportunity."Video
Source: Democracy Now!
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