Session 5: Equitable Sustainable Development

Apparently we are skipping this?

NO REQUIRED READING FOR SESSION FIVE/SIX

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

1. Watch the video: The Costs of Inequality: Joseph Stiglitz, TEXxColumbiaSIPA (16 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHT4zJsCdo
2. Answer the following questions in writing and be prepared to discuss them in class. 
3. What are Stiglitz’s main points about inequality in the USA?
   1. The economic story of the early American steel town of Gary, Indiana parallels the economic story of the larger country.
   2. Concerns about inequality, poverty, and discrimination in Gary as a microcosm of the larger nation reflect our broader politics, economics, and morals as a nation.
   3. We pay a very high price for these and other social problems.
   4. These problems are getting worse, and the cost is getting higher.
      1. Income inequality
      2. Extreme wealth hoarding by a tiny number of people
      3. While wealth for the extremely-rich is growing dramatically, wealth for everyone else is actually going down.
   5. Incomes and wealth are going down for almost everyone, with only the very rich doing better than they were in the past.
   6. Rent-seekers seize a larger share of the pie rather than making the pie bigger.
      1. Predatory lending
      2. Credit cards
      3. Landlords
   7. America is not a land of opportunity
      1. Almost no one ends up any better off than they started out.
      2. In fact the opposite is true; almost everyone ends up worse off than where they started out.
   8. Students can not discharge their debt even through bankruptcy
      1. Rich parents can pay for school, including graduate school, while everyone else can not, and instead gets debt. This makes it harder for them to succeed both because they can not afford enough education, but also because they have to pay off debt while only being able to do a lower quality of work.
   9. Conservative economic publications like the economist agree with all these points about what the problem is.
4. Why does Stiglitz conclude that inequality is endangering our future?
   1. Incomes and wealth are going down for almost everyone, with only the very rich doing better than they were in the past.
   2. We pay a high price for inequality, poverty, discrimination, and other social problems.
   3. Students can not discharge their debt even through bankruptcy
   4. Rich parents can pay for school, including graduate school, while everyone else can not, and instead gets debt. This makes it harder for them to succeed both because they can not afford enough education, but also because they have to pay off debt while only being able to do a lower quality of work.
      1. This is a generational issue which will continue to get worse.
5. How does Stiglitz talk about what market forces around the world tell us about inequality in the United States?
   1. The same conditions do not exist elsewhere which suggests the problems we face are policy choices rather than inevitabilities.
6. What are Stiglitz’s conclusions at the end of this talk?
   1. We have faced similar crises in the past and we chose to “pull back from the brink” which we can do once again.