--- title: A Conversation about Economic Inequality | TIME description: Rana Foroohar talks with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz about the economic impact of wealth inequality canonical: https://time.com/video/bFUP1aa3/ og:title: A Conversation about Economic Inequality og:description: Rana Foroohar talks with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz about the economic impact of wealth inequality og:url: https://time.com/video/bFUP1aa3/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bFUP1aa3/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Conversation about Economic Inequality twitter:description: Rana Foroohar talks with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz about the economic impact of wealth inequality twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/bFUP1aa3/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # A Conversation about Economic Inequality > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: A Conversation about Economic Inequality [Watch (HLS stream): A Conversation about Economic Inequality](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/bFUP1aa3.m3u8) (4:00)  _Published 2012-12-27. Rana Foroohar talks with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz about the economic impact of wealth inequality_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:29 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The Economic Impact of the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak](/video/dy5X2xU0/) ### The Economic Impact of the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak [Nobel economics prize awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago](/video/2VoVB3Go/) ### Nobel economics prize awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago [Rana Foroohar: Surprising Deficit Numbers Highlight Growth](/video/eIrzbWgd/) ### Rana Foroohar: Surprising Deficit Numbers Highlight Growth --- ## Transcript Hi, I'm Rana Forooher, assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business for Time Magazine. And I'm here with Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia professor and Nobel Laureate, and the author of The Price of Inequality. A book about the economic and political consequences of inequality, which came out earlier this year. Thanks so much for being with us today. Good to be here. It's great to see you again. So we wanna talk about inequality both in the U. S. and globally. And let's start with the U. S. elections. You know, I have always thought that inequality was one of the major underlying themes, and sometimes an overt theme that had a real impact on the election. What do you think about that? Oh, very much so. The word inequality wasn't used that often, but it was right beneath the surface, [ INAUDIBLE ], in a number of ways. When, for instance, the president and the Democrats talked about the struggling middle class. Yeah. What were they saying? What they really were saying is, look at. Our economy's been growing. We went down for 2009 during the, during the Great Recession. But it's been growing, basically, for the last 30 years. But the benefits have not been widely shared. Yeah. Most of the money has gone to the top. It was really worse after the Great Recession, where 93 % of all the gains. Mm. Went to the top 1 %. How is it possible, actually, to have a sustained recovery when you have numbers like that? You can't. And that's part of the link between inequality and our economy's poor performance. Because when so much of the money goes to the top, basically they can't spend it all. Mm, mm. The savings rate of the people at the bottom is close to zero. At the top, it's 15, 20 % total demand therefore is gonna be limited and that means there's not, there's gonna be unemployment. One of the things that is very hotly debated is among all of these factors, you talk about globalization, technological related job destruction ineffectual policy in the U. S. What's been the biggest creator of inequality, would you say? Well, there are many aspects of inequality. There's inequality at the top. How much money is going to the top 1 %, top 1 tenth, top 1 hundredth of 1 %. There's the hollowing out in the middle. And there's increased numbers in poverty. Mm. Each of them has their own explanation. But, for instance, if you're talking about the top, which affects everybody else. Yeah. In the system. I think that probably the most important explanation has to do with what economists call rent seeking. Hm. There are two ways to get well off, is it to get rich. One of them is to make the size of the national income. Pie larger. Hm. You know, real inventors, people who invent things like the transistor or the laser, the computer. The other one is to steal for yourself a larger share of the national pie. Right. We call the latter rent seeking Hm. And if you look at the people at the top. They don't consist of any of the people that I've just described that have really made the, the size of the pie bigger. They consist of people like, in the financial sector that used abusive credit card practices, that used, you know, manipulated libor, that engaged in predatory lending. Inside trading. And all these people were, were effectively taking money away from others. Yeah. It was a zero- sum game. Yeah. But it was actually a negative- sum game because as they took away money from others they were weakening our economy, they were destroying trust in our financial system. So that's, that's an example of the main theme of my book. That as we create more inequality, particularly the magnitude in the United States and the way it's created, we actually weaken our economy. Well this has been a sobering and illuminating conversation as always Professor Stigglett thank you so much for being here and sharing your views with us today. Yeah. 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