Joseph E. Stiglitz Quotes

#1. Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#2. As medical care has improved, life expectancy has increased - on average, in the United States, by some two years between 1990 and 2000. But for the poorest group of Americans there has been no progress, and for poor women life expectancy has actually been declining.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#3. The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#4. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#5. The U.S. incarceration rate is the world's highest and some nine to ten times that of many European countries. Almost 1 in 100 American adults is behind bars.61 Some U.S. states spend as much on their prisons as they do on their universities.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#6. The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#7. Borrowers were told not to worry about paying the ever-mounting debt, because house prices would keep rising and they could refinance, taking out some of the capital gains to buy a car or pay for a vacation.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#8. Decisions were often made because of ideology and politics. As a result many wrong-headed actions were taken, ones that did not solve the problem at hand but that fit with the interests or beliefs of the people in power.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#9. The facts shouldn't get in the way of a pleasant fantasy.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#10. 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

#11. Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#12. 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

#13. Power - often military power - was at the origin of these inequities.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#14. Ensuring that we have a well-informed public citizenry is important for a well-functioning democracy, and that in turn requires an active and diverse media.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#15. 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

#16. Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#17. The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made it perfectly clear: sophisticated investors don't, or at least shouldn't, rely on trust. Those who bought the products the banks sold were consenting adults who should have known better.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#18. What's worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to what they have. This

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#19. Loose money and light regulation were a toxic mixture. It exploded.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

#20. we have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the middle and bottom.

Joseph E. Stiglitz