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The striking thing about America is - it's historically, extraordinary unusual, I don't of any other instance - is that productivity of workers and wages have not moved in tandem.

Joseph Stiglitz

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Joseph Stiglitz
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 9
Critic
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Professor
Science Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Gary
Indiana
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
Moved
Striking
America
Historically
Thing
Productivity
Wages
Unusual
Instance
Workers
Extraordinary
Tandem

More quotes by Joseph Stiglitz

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The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The only people benefiting in Iraq war are George Bush's Jr. friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Negative effects on the economy were covered up with a flood of liquidity from the Fed. That,plus lax regulation, led to a housing bubble, a consumption boom - but we were living on borrowed money. It was inevitable that there would be a day of reckoning, and it has now come. We will be paying the costs with interest.
Joseph Stiglitz
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If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future - and these markets clearly did not exist - what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system?
Joseph Stiglitz
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The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Poverty is what we call the extremes at the bottom.
Joseph Stiglitz
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I think what they've been doing is largely almost in firefighting mode without a good conceptual framework - either at the micro or the macro level. Micro, you would ask: What kind of financial or banking system do we want? Macro, you would say: What are the underlying problems in the structure of our economy?
Joseph Stiglitz
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GDP tells you nothing about sustainability
Joseph Stiglitz
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The war in Iraq has been very, very expensive - partly because the Administration tried to keep the apparent costs down. But the benefits have been elusive at best - partly because the ostensible reasons for going war were unconnected with reality - no weapons of mass destruction, no connections with 9/11.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.
Joseph Stiglitz
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You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate.
Joseph Stiglitz
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In fact, for just about 1/6 of the cost of an Iraq War, we could have put the social security system on sound financial footings for the next 50 to 75 years. The problems can be managed - but not if we continue to fight this war for another 80 years.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The country has large unfunded liabilities - social security, health care, and there will have to be some adjustments to these problems. What is scary though is how much worse things have gotten in the last eight years, and the Iraq war is one of the main factors.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.
Joseph Stiglitz
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In a globally integrated economy, the biggest challenge is to make sure there is adequate global aggregate demand, achieved through spending, when countries like China feel they must save high levels of dollar reserves to protect against international currency volatility.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Health care is very different from other sectors of the economy in several respects, one of which is the fact that the risk can be very high beyond people's ability. That leads to insurance.
Joseph Stiglitz
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There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.
Joseph Stiglitz
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What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.
Joseph Stiglitz