joseph stiglitzVanity Fair

The U.S. economy is in dire straits, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says in an interview from an upcoming documentary on the U.S. economy. A excerpt of that movie was published on Vanity Fair today.

"If you look at the income of the typical male worker in the United States today, it's the same as it was in 1968. Almost half a century of stagnation," Stiglitz argues.

The economist goes on to blame political inequality for bolstering a system of income inequality.

A few more choice quotations from the preview:

"If all that money going to the top was the result of contributions they had made to our economy, so that as they got more everybody else also got more, that would be one thing. But that's not what's been happening in America."

"Inequality in economics is translated into inequality in politics, and particularly in the context of America where campaign finance is so important, lobbying is so important, the revolving door is so important. [So] we had a political process that said, 'No, we can't do those things that are more sustainable.'"

"Fundamentally, the issue will be whether we can do the political reforms that we need to make our politics work to create the economic policies and economic investments that we need."

We used to look at America as the land of opportunity...In fact, mobility [and] opportunity in the U.S. today is lower than it is in any of the advanced economies. So this notion of America as a land of opportunity has vanished."

Watch the full video at Vanity Fair >