Recensione: The Great Divide

“The Great Divide”, di Joseph E. Stiglitz, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-141-98122-2.

This work is more precisely a collection of several articles that the Author has written for newspapers or magazines during the last decade. The theme, however, is common to all: "Inequality".

Here, of course, we are talking about individual differences in terms of economic power and the Author explains to us that being “poor” it is not only a matter of being less rich in terms of purchasing power but it attracts on individuals a spectrum of disadvantages that directly affects them and the whole society too!

Poverty penalizes individuals starting from the mere physical survival, as measured by life expectancy, preventing access to (good) food, health care, retirement systems, etc.; but it is also a burden that reduces the possibility of real improvement for the subject and for his offspring. Poverty risks to be a perpetual damnation. Least but not last inequality is a psychological burden for individuals and a poison for the society because reduces cohesion and encourage (and justify!) the social conflict.

The US are, in recent decades, the champions of the growth of inequality among developed nations, in a context that sees the global growing of this phenomenon. For the lower part of the pyramid, they are not the promise land and the country of opportunities anymore; for the poorer the American dream is fading.  According to the Author (but now for a good part of the economists), this situation is a serious economic and social problem that should be actively addressed.

Mitigate the inequalities, in fact, does not seem just a topic related to an elementary concept of social justice, but more pragmatically, at least for those who mainly deals with "development" and "economic growth", seems to be an element that favors the increase of these factors. Moreover, it seems to be a clear correlation between the decrease of inequalities on the one hand, the strengthening of democratic society and the growth of widespread prosperity on the other.

This is an interesting thesis (which I personally agree) now widespread among many of the neo-Keynesian economists.

Let me say that finally, a growing chorus of voices is rising in favor of evidence and good sense against some ambiguous economic theories like the (for me) ridiculous ​​"trickledown economics" still fashionable for many politicians (and rich people) even today!

Turning to Mr.  Stiglitz’s work, for me only one criticism should be raised that its inherent to its structure, that it is too fragmentary. In this regard, however, it is perhaps worth recalling that the author has already written more organically in relation to these issues, for example, in his publication: " The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future”.