Joseph Stiglitz 2: "How I would vote in the Greek referendum."

It's about to get real, isn't it?

Mistrust, anger and resignation on the streets of Athens, by Lauren Zanolli (Al Jazeera)

ATHENS — After a heated day of last-minute bailout pleas and rejections, the prospect of Greece missing its $1.7 billion loan payment to the International Monetary Fund — the subject of months of speculation and hand wringing — became a reality overnight.

As Gomer Pyle was known to exclaim, "Surprise surprise": It isn't entirely about the money, but about the power. Are millions of ordinary Greeks so very culpable in the higher level chicanery not just of Greece, but the EU overall, that they must be punished forever?

It's important to remember that the "bailout" funds constantly being referenced are not migrating to Greece, to help Greeks. They're going to banks ... to help banks. The Europeans themselves obviously don't have all the answers, and neither do I.

However, it's easy to see which are the hostages, and which the hostage takers.

Joseph Stiglitz: How I would vote in the Greek referendum, by Joseph Stiglitz (The Guardian)

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Joseph Stiglitz 1: "Creating a Learning Society" even in New Albany?

The economist and educator Joseph Stiglitz is a Hoosier, born in Gary in 1943. Not unexpectedly, he's lived elsewhere ever since.

Economics can be an impenetrable morass, and there is no way of briefly surveying the career of someone as ubiquitous as Stiglitz, but here's a brieg biographical teaser.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

In New Albany, the Oscar Meyer Prize-winning fraudomist Dan Coffey also has done pioneering work in the economics of information, proving that when the the mayor is hostile, there's never enough information, but when he isn't, any available information must be carefully guarded by storage in grandma's cookie jar.

If the title of Stiglitz's forthcoming book is any indication, it is doubtful that he and Coffey will be breaking bread for the ritual sopping of barbecued bologna, washed down by copious quantities of sun tea, any time soon.

(No, Dan. "Leaning" means something else entirely)

But doesn't the phrase "Creating a Learning Society" perfectly capture New Albany's challenges as we move forward? The political culture of non-learning isn't keeping pace, and it may be time to try something different, for a change.

Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress, by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald. With Philippe Aghion, Kenneth J. Arrow, Robert M. Solow, and Michael Woodford

It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely a function of the pace at which they close that gap.

Thus, to understand how countries grow and develop, it is essential to know how they learn and become more productive and what government can do to promote learning. In Creating a Learning Society, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald cast light on the significance of this insight for economic theory and policy. Taking as a starting point Kenneth J. Arrow's 1962 paper "Learning by Doing," they explain why the production of knowledge differs from that of other goods and why market economies alone typically do not produce and transmit knowledge efficiently. Closing knowledge gaps and helping laggards learn are central to growth and development. But creating a learning society is equally crucial if we are to sustain improved living standards in advanced countries.

"This dichotomy (inequality) is bound to have social and political consequences."

A book review from The Economist, reprinted in its entirety.

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Economics: An ordinary Joe (from the print edition of The Economist)

The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future. By Joseph Stiglitz. 

THE American dream is that any child can make it from the bottom to the top. That may still be true in politics; the son of a Kenyan immigrant, raised partly by his grandparents, is now president of the United States. But it is much less true, in economic terms, than most Americans think. Social mobility is less easy in America than in other countries. For example, three-quarters of Danes born in the lowest-earning 20% of the population escape their plight in adulthood. Seven out of ten poor children in supposedly class-ridden Britain achieve the same feat. But fewer than six in ten Americans do so.

Similarly, with rags-to-riches stories. It is far less common for Americans from the bottom 20% in childhood to move into the top 20% in adulthood than it is in Denmark or in Britain. On the whole, America’s wealthy prosper while the average citizen struggles; the richest 1% of Americans gained 93% of the additional income created in 2010. The pay workers get has failed to move in line with productivity in the past 30 years. But Americans have yet to realise the extent of this tectonic shift. In a survey conducted in 2011 the average respondent thought that the richest fifth of the population had 60% of the wealth, not 85% as is the case. The respondents’ ideal income distribution would be for the top quintile to have just 30% of the wealth.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics and a regular critic of liberal capitalism, addresses this issue in his new book, which he wrote in response to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Indeed, he argues that their slogan, “We are the 99%”, echoes an article entitled, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”, that he wrote in Vanity Fair in May 2011.

To Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by an elite who have feathered their own nests at the expense of the rest. They have used their power to distort political debate, pushing through tax cuts to favour the rich and adjusting monetary policy to favour the banks. Many of the new rich are not entrepreneurs but “rent-seekers”, he says, who use monopoly power to boost profits.

Mr Stiglitz’s views are representative of clever, leftish America and Mr Stiglitz is (mostly) skilled at making his argument. Imagine, he says, what it would be like if the world had free movement of labour, but not of capital. “Countries would compete to attract workers. They would promise good schools and a good environment, as well as low taxes on workers. This could be financed by high taxes on capital.” The result would be a much more equal society.

Mr Stiglitz’s argument would benefit, however, from a better sense of history and geography. He points to the period between 1950 and 1980 as one where inequality was much reduced. But that was a highly unusual time. For much of recorded history there has been a huge gap between a wealthy landowning class and the rest; the Rockefellers and Carnegies were much richer (in real terms) than any modern plutocrat. Mr Stiglitz also views the housing boom and bust as another result of misguided American policy, but Spain and Ireland had property bubbles too—and they are much more equal societies.

When it comes to solutions to the inequality problem, Mr Stiglitz wants a top income tax rate of “well in excess of” 50%, targeted fiscal stimulus and greater bank regulation. Here, perhaps, he might have been more open about the trade-offs. Controls on bank leverage, caps on interest rates and greater protection for bankrupts are all likely to reduce bank lending at a time when there already is a credit squeeze. He admits that the 2009 fiscal stimulus was “not as well designed as it could have been”, but blithely hopes that the convoluted American budget-setting process will result in much better stimulus packages in future.

Whether or not he has the right answers, Mr Stiglitz is surely right to focus on the issue. Across the developed world, the average worker is suffering a squeeze in living standards while bankers and chief executives are still doing very nicely. This dichotomy is bound to have social and political consequences.