Stiglitz Bares Billionaires’ Weapon -- Government

By James Pressley - Jun 10, 2012

As a populist war cry, “We are the 99 percent” is hard to beat. What the movement has lacked, though, is a coherent message and agenda. Until now.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who grew up amid the steel-mill grit and grind of Gary, Indiana, has spent decades studying the subject of his provocative new book, “The Price of Inequality.”

His conclusion: Economic growth, democracy and even the upper class itself suffer when the top 1 percent of Americans earns a fifth of the country’s income and controls more than a third of its wealth, as they do today.