Stiglitz and Piketty and Saez
Oh my!
Make no doubt about it. The economic game is over and done with. Stiglitz and Piketty and Saez are like the Holy Trinity of economics. You can try arguing with one or the other, but all get three together and even God her ownself will simply add "What they said!"
Here's Stiglitz:
http://www.businessinsider.com/joseph-stiglitz-says-neoliberalism-is-dea...
Piketty and Saez:
https://caucus99percent.com/content/building-picketty-and-saez
Okay! Now what? Now we check out Inequality.org for ling story short:
Unleashing the Transformative Potential of an Equitable Economy
Policy interventions that and address some of the systemic drivers of inequality. They fall into four categories, including policies that:
Lift the Floor, establishing minimal standard of living and safety nets
Level the Playing Field, by ensuring investments in public goods and elimination of the distorting influences of power and privilege
Deconcentrate Wealth, through interventions that directly reduce the concentration of wealth and power
Rewire the System, to undercut inequality drivers
A Way Forward
It’s hard to imagine many of these solutions moving forward at the national level in the current political environment, but there are opportunities to incubate them in states and localities and lay the groundwork for a future political realignment. One way forward is to build power and win some of these rule changes by focusing on “pressure points” that can accelerate the transition to the next system. This will require game changing campaigns that accomplish three things:
Reduce the concentration of wealth and power, break up institutions, or redistribute wealth and power
Open up economic opportunities for those excluded in the current system.
Capture the imagination of a wide constituency of people willing to fight for policy change.
Three examples in the paper are:Dividends for all: linking common wealth sources of revenue to programs that expand economic stability
Taxing excessive carbon solution and directing revenue to investments in renewable energy, green infrastructure and just transition efforts.
Sounds simple enough, right? Here's the full report (long read):
Reversing Inequality: Unleashing the Transformative Potential of an Equitable Economy
https://thenextsystem.org/inequality
Have a nice weekend.

Comments
So much...
Weekend reading MM.
Thanks for the lines.
Need to talk about real issues and real solutions.
I want a Pony!
Ok I HAVE to add this
I want a Pony!
I'll See Your Lion's and Tigers and Bears
and raise you a Tin Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uJL8er_tV0&sns=em
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Something IS up.
Your Stiglitz link had a link at the bottom to something called "The Bottom Line" on which a Suited Dude explained his book about the last 5 "modern" market crashes. He said that each one had a contraption that failed and a catalyst that tipped it over. Asked about similarities to today, he never mentioned 2007, CDO's, or CLO's, but went on at length about the "crash of 2010" and said it couldn't happen again. When the flak catchers come out singing "Blue Skies and Better Days" it means everything is just fine. They were singing chorus after chorus right up to when Secretary Bagman came out and said "Well, I guess we do have to give $1.4 trillion to Golden Sacks. Who'd a thunk it?"
Secretary Bagman
Do you refer to the old arcade video game Bagman where you run around in a mine scooping up sacks of gold and tossing them into your wagon while avoiding the rampaging cops? "Aye-ye-yie-ya!" (The sound you make when they catch you)
I loved that video game.
I only wish I was!
Back during the Ronnie Raygun Era, the neocons (I guess they were just cons back then) pumped out lots of books in an attempt to justify what they were doing and what they wanted to do. They quoted each others books to back up their arguments (fake news blogging of the day). One of their biggest hits was "transfer of wealth" and I am pretty sure that I still have a copy of a book by that name. The premise was that the nefarious commies in the gubmint were transferring the wealth of taxpaying, God-fearing Mericans by deliberate, conspiratorial use of the "welfare system" to support millions of welfare queens who ate caviar and drove Cadillacs all day: the life blood of our nation was being deliberately siphoned away from job creation and other good stuff by tax-and-spend liberals who had lost their right to be Merican. Watching the Secretary of the Treasury on that Saturday was like watching Crocodile Dundee saying "Haw! THAT'S not transfer of wealth: THIS is a transfer of wealth!!"
I'm sick of "the political climate".
They are representatives, not overlords. I won't be happy until we restore the balance of power.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Hear, hear!!!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I'm not God. I don't even play God on TV. But, I'll
believe it when I see it.
Republicans are Republicans. Democrats thinking running more Blue Dogs could give them back the House (pipe dream, but point is, they're running more Blue Dogs).
My lame claim to fame
The thesis advisor of my thesis advisor was Joseph Stiglitz. That makes me . . . absolutely nothing, because I never finished my thesis. My prof got a journal article out of my unfinished work, so kudos for him!
Please read --
Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste before declaring neoliberalism to be fully dead. The problem is this: for neoliberalism to be dead, the neoliberals in power would have to think differently. They don't.
"Zionism is to Judaism what the KKK is to Christianity" -- Jimmy Dore
@Cassiodorus
Well, maybe once it's realized that in a democratic system nobody is supposed to hold power.
The power lies in the public offices - not the people - forming government as the united voice and arm of the people, to be used to act in the public interest, and through public-protective law, to ensure that those who would predate upon others cannot do so with impunity and, where appropriate, must make reparation to the victim(s).
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.