Meet the ‘Change Agents’ Who Are Enabling Inequality

Joseph E. Stiglitz in the New York Times:

First came the books describing just how much worse economic inequality had become over the past 20 years, with all the dramatic political implications now impossible to ignore. Then there were the tomes about globalization (including my own, I admit), detailing the West’s unfettered pursuit of neoliberal policies that abetted all this unfairness.

Well, prepare for a new genre: books gently and politely skewering the corporate titans who claim to be solving such problems. It’s an elite that, rather than pushing for systemic change, only reinforces our lopsided economic reality — all while hobnobbing on the conference circuit and trafficking in platitudes.

Anand Giridharadas, a former columnist for The New York Times, spoke about this phenomenon at an Aspen Institute conference in 2015, and he takes his ideas further in his entertaining and gripping new book, “Winners Take All.” As the Democratic Party struggles to figure out its future and global demagogy thrives, it’s worth considering where we went wrong and how best to save the world from the dangerous turn it has taken. It’s now very clear that globalization, technology and market liberalization did not bring their promised benefits — at least not for the vast majority of Americans and those in advanced countries around the world.

More here.