Some people say we have this inequality because some people have been contributing much more to our society, and so it's fair that they get more. But then you look at the people who are at the top, and you realize they're not the people who have transformed our economy, our society.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the notion that economic inequality is justified by individual contributions to society.
In this quote, Joseph Stiglitz critiques the prevailing belief that those who earn the most have contributed significantly more to society than others. He argues that many individuals at the top of the economic ladder have not necessarily transformed society or the economy, suggesting that their wealth is not always a reflection of merit or contribution, but rather a result of systemic inequality.
In practice
During a debate on economic policies, this quote can be used to argue against the meritocracy narrative.
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor.
I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.
Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States, and it's not going to happen in Europe.
What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.
One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.
Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies - whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico - are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.
The poor don't live in functional market economies as the rest of us do, but in political economies where corruption and broken systems extend from local government to moneylenders.
I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize - not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years - the way the world thinks about economic problems.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
President Bush announced his new economic plan. The centerpiece was a proposed repeal of the dividend tax on stocks, a boon that could be worth millions of dollars to average Americans. Well, average stock-owning Americans. Technically, Americans who own a significant amount of shares in dividend-dealing companies. Well, rich people, that's what I'm trying to say. They're going to do really well with this.
In Europe and the United States the two decades following the Second World War will for long be remembered as a very good time, the time when capitalism really worked. Everywhere in the industrialized countries production increased. Unemployment was everywhere low. Prices were nearly stable. When production lagged and unemployment rose, governments intervened to take up the slack, as Keynes had urged.
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