Lynn Parramore: Joseph Stiglitz Sees Terifying Future for America!

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of America's most prescient voices, wrote an article for Vanity Fair several months before Occupy Wall Street was born. "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% called attention to the widening gap between rich and poor, and its deadly impact on our society and its democratic institutions. In his newly released book, "The Price of Inequality, Stiglitz returns to this theme of a divided society, delving into the origins and consequences of economic unfairness. I caught up with Professor Stiglitz and talked to him about how the persistent myths and beliefs associated with our capitalist system help to drive this trend, turning America from a land of opportunity to a land of broken dreams. Joseph Stiglitz: Capitalism does have a lot of strengths, including producing things that are very innovative, but what drives capitalism is the profit motive. You can profit not only by making good things, but also by exploiting people, by exploiting the environment, by doing things that are not so good. The narrative that you describe ignores the extent to which a lot of the inequalities in the United States are not the result of creative activity, but of exploitive activity, and if you look at the people at the top, what is so striking is that the people who've made the most important creative contributions are not there: By that I mean the really foundational things like the computer, the transistor, the laser. And how many people at the top are people who made their money out of monopoly, exercising monopoly power? Like bankers who exploited through predatory lending practices and abusive credit card practices, or CEOs who took advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance.