Phillip Inman in The Guardian:
Embracing academia has provided a platform for the recently ennobled economist to air her views in a forthcoming book, What We Owe Each Other. Shafik has joined the campaign against a winner-takes-all business culture that offers the spoils of capitalism only to those that rise to the top, putting her in the company of some of the world’s most prominent political thinkers.
While she has come a long way from her Egyptian birthplace, her questioning of privilege has remained consistent. “The idea that you are successful because you are smart and hardworking is pernicious and wrong, because it means everyone who is unsuccessful is stupid and lazy,” she says. Referring to her friend Michael Sandel, the Harvard philosopher, she says the next phase of history should be characterised by a shared endeavour, ending the extreme individualism of the last 40 years.
More here.