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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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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
Fact
Continue
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Cost
Social
Problems
Next
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Iraq

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 problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.
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For that to happen, growth has to be very strong. To get back to normalcy, we will have to have extended growth of more than 3 percent. That's not in the cards.
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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I went to Amherst because my brother had gone there before me, and he went there because his guidance counselor thought that we would do better there than at a large university like Harvard.
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I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate.
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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I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The roots of the crisis in East Asia were in private sector decisions. The biggest problems were the misallocation of investment, most notably to speculative real estate, and risky financing, especially borrowing short-term debt on international markets.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Climate change is a reality.
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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Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can’t function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations.
Joseph Stiglitz
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My teachers helped guide and motivate me but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.
Joseph Stiglitz
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For 60 years, since World War II, we have been trying to create a rules-based system, a global economic system. We understand that what makes our economy function is what we call the rule of law, and what is true domestically is also true internationally. It is important to have rules by which we govern our relations with other countries.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The military is focusing only on the short run costs. If they don't provide appropriate body armor, they save some money today, but the healthcare cost is going to be the future for some other president down the line. I view that as both fiscally and morally irresponsible.
Joseph Stiglitz
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It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Moreover, because we chose to finance the way by borrowing, our deficits and debt has soared, and this means we have less room for maneuver, less money available to stimulate the eocnomy in the way needed.
Joseph Stiglitz
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American inequality didn't just happen. It was created.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.
Joseph Stiglitz