Stiglitz, Joseph ekon

4 24

we talked to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz about his new book,*The Road to Freedom,* and his ideas about what it will take to build a more fair economy and good society after the collapse of neoliberalism.

The current so-called “polycrisis” — political, economic, and environmental — means the question of what comes next has been very much on the minds of today’s thinkers. Today we present an exclusive excerpt from economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler’s forthcoming book, Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society. Chandler, who directs the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism at the London School of Economics, offers a take on the future based on his reading of the philosopher John Rawls, the influential theorist of justice....

AMY GOODMAN: Joe, we want to get to the costs of war. You wrote a book on this. But first, the World Health Organization's Africa director has condemned plans by the U.S. and other wealthy countries to offer third-dose COVID vaccine booster shots, while only 2% of Africa's 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated. Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said the U.S. should have given priority, and must do it now, to poorer nations. This is what she said.

DR. MATSHIDISO MOETI: Moves by some countries globally to introduce booster shots threaten the promise of a brighter tomorrow for Africa. As some richer countries hoard vaccines, they make a mockery, frankly, of vaccine equity.

AMY GOODMAN: You've just written an article on this issue, along with Lori Wallach. And I'm wondering if you can talk about — it's called "Will Corporate Greed Prolong the Pandemic?" Can you talk about vaccine equity?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Sure. I mean, it's very clear that we're not all — we're not going to be safe until the whole world is safe. As long as the disease is festering someplace in the world, there are going to be mutations. We know that. And we know that these mutations can be more contagious, more dangerous, and even more vaccine-resistant. So it's in our own self-interest that we get the disease controlled everywhere.

But right now there are two problems. This issue of vaccine equity, who gets the vaccine and who doesn't, and disproportionately, United States is getting a real access to the vaccine, and the developing countries simply are not. But, to me, the real issue is lack of supply. There is no excuse, a year — more, well more, than a year after the COVID-19 started, well after we discovered the vaccines that work, that there should be this kind of supply shortage. The market economy has the ability to produce these vaccines. I'm afraid that they're limiting the production to keep the price up. The head of Pfizer was hoping that he could sell each dose for $175, something that costs far, far less than that. So, to me, the first priority ought to be revving up production so that there is a supply for everybody in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, the costs of war — you wrote a book on this subject — as Biden pulls U.S. troops out of Afghanistan?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the title of my book I wrote more than a decade ago was The Three Trillion Dollar War, pointing out the high cost of the War in Afghanistan and Iraq. We knew that our numbers were conservative. But as time mounted on and the costs mounted up, what we've discovered is that the cost just of caring for our returning troops —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: — is in the trillions of dollars. The wars have been little benefit, but enormous cost to our society.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Joe Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Among his books, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.

That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe.

https://www.ecowatch.com/new-zealand-climate-risk-reporting-2647698323.html

New Zealand could be the first country in the world to require its major financial institutions to report on the risks posed by the climate crisis.

This means that about 200 of the country's biggest companies and banks would have to report on the impact that extreme weather events or climate polices will have on their business, Stuff explained.

"Today is another step on the journey this Government is taking towards a low carbon future for Aotearoa New Zealandand a cleaner, safer planet for future generations," said Minister for Climate Change James Shaw Tuesday, Scoop reported.

The move builds on New Zealand's emerging legacy of climate action, such as its historic Zero Carbon Bill that committed the country to honoring the goals of the Paris agreement and achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.

However, New Zealand's parliament is currently dissolved ahead of the Oct. 17 election, The Guardian reported. In order for it to enter into force, Shaw's party, the Green Party, would have to enter a coalition government after the election and the proposal would then have to pass parliament.

If it passes, every New Zealand bank, building society, credit union, insurer or Crown Financial Institution with more than $1 billion in assets will have to report annually on the risk climate change poses to its business or explain why it cannot, according to Stuff. That report would include what the risks are, how the institution is managing them and how it is working to address the impacts of climate change.

"Many large businesses in New Zealand do not currently have a good understanding of how climate change will impact on what they do," Shaw said. "The changes I am announcing today will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making. It will ensure the disclosure of climate risk is clear, comprehensive and mainstream."

Shaw said that Australia, Canada, UK, France, Japan and the European Union were developing some form of climate risk reporting, but New Zealand's plan was more ambitious because it included the whole financial system, according to Scoop. The institutions covered by the policy account for 90 percent of the assets controlled in New Zealand, Stuff reported.

If the proposal passes parliament, the climate reporting would begin in 2023.

Nobel Laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz praised the proposed plan, according to The Guardian.

"Once again, New Zealand is leading the world… It led the world in showing how democratic countries could manage the risks of Covid-19," he said. "And now, New Zealand is leading the way in showing how we can help manage the risk of climate change."

mma 720

Lomborg’s book was given a scathing review in The New York Times by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz,noting the “many contradictions within the book” and taking to task his “underestimation of the damage associated with climate change.” (Indeed, during Lomborg’s appearances on both Varney & Co.and *Making Money with Charles Payne*, he did not once mention the cost of inaction on climate change, which is estimated to be many trillions of dollars -- much greater than actually taking action.) The Times’ review closed by saying “Lomborg’s work would be downright dangerous were it to succeed in persuading anyone that there was merit in its arguments.

video

https://www.c-span.org/video/?459877-1/people-power-profits

new book

Stiglitz

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor and chief economist for the Roosevelt Institute. He served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. His new book is People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an age of discontent

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/24/economist_joseph_stiglitz_capitalism_hasnt_been

...

GONZÁLEZ: Well, Disney heiress Abigail Disney is speaking out against wage inequality, calling Disney CEO Bob Iger’s salary, quote, “insane.” In an opinion piece for The Washington Post published Tuesday titled “It’s time to call out Disney—and anyone else rich off their workers’ backs,” she wrote, quote, “I had to speak out about the naked indecency of chief executive Robert Iger’s pay. According to Equilar, Iger took home more than $65 million in 2018. That’s 1,424 times the median pay of a Disney worker. To put that gap in context, in 1978, the average CEO made about 30 times a typical worker’s salary. Since 1978, CEO pay has grown by 937 percent, while the pay of an average worker grew just 11.2 percent. This growth in inequality has affected every corner of American life.”

AMY GOODMAN: Those are the words of Abigail Disney. She went on to write, “At the pay levels we are talking about, an executive giving up half his bonus has zero effect on his quality of life. For the people at the bottom, it could mean a ticket out of poverty or debt. It could offer access to decent health care or an education for a child,” she wrote.

We spend the rest of the hour looking at inequality and the state of the economy with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. Joe Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University, professor and chief economist for the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book is out this week: People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.

Joe Stiglitz, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Why don’t you start off by talking about Abby Disney, what she had to say? She is the heiress of Disney, saying that Iger’s salary, the CEO, is “insane.”

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: She’s absolutely right. You mentioned that in the late '70s it was 30 to one, on average; today it's over 300 to one.And it’s not as if our CEOs have gotten 10 times as productive in those intervening years. It’s not as if—you know, American CEOs get paid so much more than their workers relative to those in Europe and even more relative to those in Japan. And it’s not because our CEOs are that much more productive. It’s because we have a real problem in our corporate governance laws, in our norms, that allow them to take away that much money.

And that money—you know, she points that it could have gone to—made a very big difference to workers. That money could also have gone into investment. You know, one of the striking things about the United States today is that while the rates of return are very, very high relative to what they’ve been in the past, the levels of investment have been low. So, you would have thought those two would have gone together, but with CEO pay and share buybacks being so large—trillion dollars of share buybacks last year—the money isn’t going either to workers or to investment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And then, of course, you have to add the taxation policy, which is gradually protecting wealth rather than trying to create a level playing field, whether it’s with the elimination of the inheritance tax or the ending, effectively, of progressive taxation. That means that all that money that they get, they get to keep, as well, right?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. You know, this is a time where we—given the growth of inequality, you would have thought the natural response is to ramp up a progressivity of our tax system. And we’ve done just the opposite. The 2017 tax bill is a real illustration of that. It increased the tax rate on a majority of people in the second, third and fourth quintile. In other words, the vast middle class, when the bill is fully implemented, will see higher tax rates, in order to give a tax cut for billionaires.

Another way I put it as an economist, going back to your question about Abigail Disney, they talk about incentives. What kind of a CEO do you need to pay $60 million to get him off the golf course? You know, you don’t pay a surgeon who’s doing heart surgery, and say, “I’ll pay you a lot of money, provided I survive. But if I don’t, by the way, you don’t get anything.” Surgeons are professionals. They do all that they can to make sure that the surgery enables you to live. Our CEOs ought to be that kind of professional. And they used to be that kind of professional. They say, “My job, I’m trusted by my corporation to do the best I can for the corporation, and I’ll give it all. And you’re paying $5 million or $10 million to do that. That’s more than adequate.” And in other countries, people have that kind of sense of responsibility. But not, evidently, CEOs like that of Disney.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe, your book is titled People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. Should it be progressive capitalism or worker power? I mean, this is increasingly becoming the issue, when you have the top candidates and most popular political figures, like AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like Bernie Sanders, one of the top presidential contenders, proudly calling themselves Democratic Socialists.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. So, in those few words in the title, I try to pack an awful lot. So, one of the things I wanted to say is that any modern economy, the market is going to have to play an important role. So, that’s why I wanted to use the word “capitalism.” But I wanted to signal that the form of capitalism that we’ve seen over the last 40 years has not been working for most people. And that’s why I talk about people. We have to have progressive capitalism. We have to tame capitalism and redirect capitalism so it serves our society. You know, people are not supposed to serve the economy; the economy is supposed to serve our people.

The other word I talk about is “power.” Here, what I’m trying to capture is, there’s a real sense of powerlessness by a lot of Americans—powerlessness in the economy and powerlessness in our politics. It’s because of the increased concentration of market power in our economy, the growth of those monopolies, tech monopolies, monopolies in so many sectors, which is one of the factors that have contributed to all this inequality. But there’s also—

AMY GOODMAN: Hasn’t capitalism always done that?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Not to the extent that it has. You know, you can trace out the degree of monopoly power. And, yes, it was terrible at the end of the 19th century, and that’s why we passed anti-trust laws. And they worked for a while. We broke up Standard Oil. We broke up a lot of the other big monopolies. And then, around the middle of the 20th century, there was a set of ideas that were propagated byMilton Friedman at University of Chicago, that said, “The market is naturally competitive. Don’t worry about market power.” And that was just basically giving a blank check to the formation of more monopolies.

The idea that corporations will to try to exert that kind of exploitation for market power is an old one. Adam Smith talked about it. You know, he talked about this idea that the business leaders seldom get together, even for merriment, without getting a conspiracy against the general well-being. So, he was aware of it. But that’s why we passed laws to circumscribe it. And then we had this doctrine that says, “Don’t worry about it.” And now we see the consequences of not worrying about it. And it’s reached new, high peaks.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to ask you about one section in your book where you’ve—and several of your articles—you’ve talked about China and what’s the economic model of China. In your book, you say, “For many of the billions in the developing world and emerging markets, China, using its distinctive [quote] 'socialist' market economy with Chinese characteristics, has provided a dynamic alternative vision to that of America, whose standing suffered a major blow with the 2008 crisis.” Now, China, to many folks, is basically a form of state capitalism, not really socialism, but state capitalism, yet it has had an enormous economic growth—7, 10% a year—and it’s raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: About 740 million people out of poverty.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, what does that say about the form of capitalism that we have in the United States, or even in Western Europe, that China is economically providing much more to its people these days than these systems are, in terms of where it came from?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, first, you have to remember they were catching up. And it proved to be an effective instrument for catching up. But there’s a price in terms of democracy. And I would have hoped that we would be a model, showing that you can have a kind of capitalism that actually works for people, the kind of progressive capitalism that I’ve been talking about, that can deliver growth, but not just for the 1% or one-tenth of 1%, but for the majority of our citizens.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But hasn’t the exacerbation of inequality—I go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. There were competing systems back then, and Western capitalism had to at least provide some benefits to its workers to prevent them from going toward socialism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, not only were new markets opened up for capitalism, but there was no longer a need to give any sops to the working class, as a result of the fact that there was no longer a competing system.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think you’re absolutely right. And I think it’s one of the forces that have undermined the way our economic system has worked. We haven’t been challenged, to put it in a way. But we are being challenged now, because so many people have done so poorly.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you say “we,” you mean?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: United States, we as a country, but also Western Europe. To put it, you know, another way, in the 1950s, we aspired to be the first middle-class society. And we talked about education for all. We had infrastructure investment. We had a tax rate at the top of 90%, and we had the fastest rate of growth that we’ve ever had.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we want to ask you about how healthcare for all, how canceling of student debt, pre-K, how all of these issues can be financed under progressive capitalism—all the issues that are being put forward by a few of the Democratic candidates right now. Joe Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, with us. Stay with us.

...

[bernie clip w/ 3 amazing #'s]

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11072018/joseph-stiglitz-kids-climate-change-lawsuit-global-warming-costs-economic-impact

One of the world's top economists has written an expert court report that forcefully supports a group of children and young adults who have sued the federal government for failing to act on climate change.

Joseph Stiglitz, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize for economics in 2001 and has written extensively about environmental economics and climate change, makes an economic case that the costs of maintaining a fossil fuel-based economy are "incalculable," while transitioning to a lower-carbon system will cost far less.

The government, he writes, should move "with all deliberate speed" toward alternative energy sources. Stiglitz has submitted briefs for Supreme Court cases—and normally charges $2,000 an hour for legal advice, the report says—but he wrote this 50-page report pro bono at the request of the attorneys representing the children. It was filed in federal district court in Oregon on June 28.

He is one of 18 expert witnesses planning to testify in the case, scheduled for trial later this year, the children's lawyers said.

New Government Attempt to Stop the Case

The children's climate lawsuit, filed in 2015, accuses the federal government of perpetuating policies that favor a fossil-fuel based energy system and of failing to adequately regulate greenhouse gas emissions. By doing so, the suit alleges, the government exposed the children to the dangers of climate change and has failed to manage natural resources, in the public trust, for future generations.

A federal district judge is scheduled to hear the case on Oct. 29. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have tried to have the case dismissed, but their efforts have been rejected by the courts.

Last week, attorneys for the Trump administration filed a motion for an emergency stay in a federal appeals court, which the children's attorneys responded to on Tuesday.

"Just to be clear, there is no emergency," said Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children's Trust, which is representing the children. "They're pulling out every frivolous motion they can to dodge the case."

Stiglitz: Action Is Feasible and Benefits Economy

Stiglitz, a Columbia University economics professor and former World Bank chief economist, concludes that increasing global warming will have huge costs on society and that a fossil fuel-based system "is causing imminent, significant, and irreparable harm to the Youth Plaintiffs and Affected Children more generally." He explains in a footnote that his analysis also examines impacts on "as-yet-unborn youth, the so-called future generations."

"There is a point at which, once this harm occurs, it cannot be undone at any reasonable cost or in any reasonable period of time," Stiglitz writes. "Based on the best available science, our country is close to approaching that point."

But, he says, acting on climate change now—by imposing a carbon tax and cutting fossil fuel subsidies, among other steps—is still manageable and would have net-negative costs. He argues that if the government were to pursue clean energy sources and energy-smart technologies, "the net benefits of a policy change outweigh the net costs of such a policy change."

"Defendants must act with all deliberate speed and immediately cease the subsidization of fossil fuels and any new fossil fuel projects, and implement policies to rapidly transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels," Stiglitz writes. "This urgent action is not only feasible, the relief requested will benefit the economy."

Stiglitz has been examining the economic impact of global warming for many years. He was a lead author of the 1995 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative assessment of climate science that won the IPCC the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Al Gore.

If It Gets to the Supreme Court?

The Trump administration may ask the Supreme Court to review an earlier appeals court decision, from March, that allowed the case to proceed in the lower, district court, Olson said. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring, gave the administration an extension, until Aug. 5, to petition the court for a review.

Olson said it's likely the case will end up in the Supreme Court eventually, but she's unconcerned about Kennedy's retirement and the expected shift to a more conservative court.

"This case is fundamentally a conservative case," she said. "It's about protecting individual liberties from government abuses of power, and that's very much in line with the conservative justices on the court."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM

CLEAN ENERGY

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

CHILDREN'S CLIMATE LAWSUIT

CLIMATE CHANGE

trump 5/18

https://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-donald-trump-and-me-first-doctrine

Trump's sudden cancellation of the upcoming denuclearization summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is just the latest example of Trump's wildly erratic approach to foreign policy.

While Trump's domestic policies seem to be guided by clear objectives -- increasing corporate profits, undoing every policy made by the Obama administration, and appeasing Trump's anti-immigrant base -- the imperatives driving US foreign policy under Trump remain something of a mystery.

In this exclusive interview, renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky sheds light on the realities and dangers of foreign relations in the age of "gangster capitalism" and the decline of the US as a superpower.

Polychroniou: Noam, Donald Trump rose to power with "America First" as the key slogan of his election campaign. However, looking at what his administration has done so far on both the domestic and international front, it is hard to see how his policies are contributing to the well-being and security of the United States. With that in mind, can you decode for us what Trump's "America First" policy may be about with regard to international relations?

Noam Chomsky: It is only natural to expect that policies will be designed for the benefit of the designers and their actual -- not pretended -- constituency, and that the well-being and security of the society will be incidental. And that is what we commonly discover. We might recall, for example, the frank comments on the Monroe Doctrine by Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing: "In its advocacy of the Monroe Doctrine the United States considers its own interests. The integrity of other American nations is an incident, not an end. While this may seem based on selfishness alone, the author of the Doctrine had no higher or more generous motive in its declaration." The observation generalizes in international affairs, and much the same logic holds within the society.

There is nothing essentially new about "America First," and "America" does not mean America, but rather the designers and their actual constituency.

In Trumpian lingo, "America First" means "me first" and damn the consequences for the country or the world.

A typical illustration is the policy achievement of which the Trump-Ryan-McConnell administration is most proud: the tax bill -- what Joseph Stiglitz accurately called "The US Donor Relief Act of 2017." It contributes very directly to the well-being of their actual constituency: private wealth and corporate power. It benefits the actual constituency indirectly by the standard Republican technique (since Reagan) of blowing up the deficit as a pretext for undermining social programs, which are the Republicans' next targets. The bill is thus of real benefit to its actual constituency and severely harms the general population.

... israel, korea

regulatory takings under nafta much worse tpp

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-29-2016/

stiglitz

http://grist.org/news/trans-pacific-partnership-could-undermine-climate-regulations-top-economist-warns/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS,^[2] FBA (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor atColumbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and is a former member and chairman of the (US president's) Council of Economic Advisers.^[3][4] He is known for his critical view of the management ofglobalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists"), and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001, received that university's highest academic rank (university professor) in 2003, and is the co-chair of the university's Committee on Global Thought. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute as well as the Socialist International Commission on Global Financial Issues and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In 2009 the President of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, appointed Stiglitz as the chairman of the U.N. Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, where he oversaw suggested proposals and commissioned a report on reforming the international monetary and financial system.^[5] Since 2012 Stiglitz has been the president of theInternational Economic Association (IEA).^[6] He presided over the organization of the IEA triennial world congress held near the Dead Sea in Jordan in June 2014.^[7]

Based on academic citations, Stiglitz is the 4th most influential economist in the world today,^[8] and in 2011 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.^[9] Stiglitz's work focuses on income distribution, asset risk management, corporate governance, and international trade. He is the author of several books, the latest beingThe Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them (2015).^[10]

3 Government

4 Economic views

5 Books