Author: Murvin Auzenne

Copyright © 2012 by Joseph E. Stiglitz. This excerpt originally appeared in From Cairo to Wall Street: Voices From the Global Spring © 2012 by Anya Schiffrin and Eamon Kircher-Allen, published by The New Press
Form: Joseph Stiglitz: The 99 Percent Wakes Up
[note: the “99 Percent” are the Occupy Wallstreeters and their supporters who are angry with the financial institutions involved in the crash of the economy in 2008. Look them up on the net if you need more info]
The political system seems to be failing as much as the economic system, and in some ways, the two failures are intertwined. The system failed to prevent the crisis, it failed to remedy the crisis, it failed to check the growing inequality, it failed to protect those at the bottom, and it failed to prevent the corporate abuses. And while it was failing, the growing deficits suggested that these failures were likely to continue into the future.
Americans, Europeans, and people in other democracies around the world take great pride in their democratic institutions. But the protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. The politicians have to listen to the voices of the citizens. However, increasingly, and especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to “one dollar one vote” than to “one person one vote.” Rather the correcting the market’s failures, the political system is reinforcing them.
Tax systems in which a billionaire like Warren Buffett pays less taxes (as a percentage of his income) than those who work for him, or in which speculators who helped bring down the global economy are taxed at lower rates than are those who work for their income reinforce the view that politics is unfair, and contribute to the growing inequality.
The failures in politics and economics are related—and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy also provides opportunity for laws and regulations—and the administration of laws and regulations—to be designed in ways that not only fail to protect the ordinary citizens against the wealthy but enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of society.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/02/joseph-stiglitz-the-99-percent-wakes-up.html