Joseph Stiglitz Globalization Quotes

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. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

GDP tells you nothing about sustainability ~ Joseph Stiglitz

We could have saved Wall Street without putting our future in jeopardy. I predicted that there would be all-around consequences - in the long run as well as in the short run. People are now saying we can't afford health care reform because we spent all the money on the banks. So, in effect, we're saying that it's better that we give rich bankers a couple of trillion than giving ordinary Americans access to health care. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom - and the recession made it much worse. (g) There has been a hollowing out of the middle class. (h) There is little income mobility - the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth. (i) And America has more inequality than any other advanced industrialized country, it does less to correct these inequities, and inequality is growing more than in many other countries. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

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

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

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

Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

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. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

We are helping the people that [George W.]Bush says are evil. Teheran couldn't be happier about the high oil prices resulting from the Iraq war. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

What most Americans mean when they say "the end of the recession" is, "When will it be back to normal? When can we get jobs? When will the employment rate be back to 4 percent or 5 percent?" ~ Joseph Stiglitz

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

I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

For most people, wages are the most important source of income. Macroeconomic and monetary policies that result in higher unemployment - and lower wages for ordinary citizens - are a major source of inequality in our society today. Over the past quarter century macroeconomic and monetary policies and institutions have failed to produce stability; they failed to produce sustainable growth; and, most importantly, they failed to produce growth that benefited most citizens in our society. In ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

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

There is a growing consensus that the European systems have worked better than the American: They have been able to deliver better health care to more people at lower cost. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

The powerful try to frame the discussion in a way that benefits their interests, realizing that, in a democracy, they cannot simply impose their rule on others. In one way or another, they have to "co-opt" the rest of society to advance their agenda. Here ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

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

Loose money and light regulation were a toxic mixture. It exploded. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

Power - often military power - was at the origin of these inequities. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

American inequality didn't just happen. It was created. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Active learning is always involved with interaction between teachers and students and Socratic methods and that's gonna continue. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

World War II was really unusual, because America was in the Great Depression before. So the war did help the US economy to get securely out of this decline. This time, the war [in Iraq] is bad for the economy in both the short and long run. We could have spent trillions in research or education instead. This would have led to future productivity increases. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

In developing countries, lack of infrastructure is a far more serious barrier to trade than tariffs. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

The facts shouldn't get in the way of a pleasant fantasy. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

When I said "the pocket of the banks," it is not necessarily a mercenary relationship. It is a mindset. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. ~ Joseph Stiglitz