Stiglitz: Unrestrained power and rampant greed are writing an epitaph for the American dream

i was pointed to this by commenter mettle...

from the guardian...

The ancient Greeks had a word for it – pleonexia – which means an overreaching desire for more than one's share.

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In The Price of Inequality, Joseph E Stiglitz passionately describes how unrestrained power and rampant greed are writing an epitaph for the American dream. The promise of the US as the land of opportunity has been shattered by the modern pleonetic tyrants, who make up the 1%, while sections of the 99% across the globe are beginning to vent their rage. That often inchoate anger, seen in Occupy Wall Street and Spain's los indignados, is given shape, fluency, substance and authority by Stiglitz. He does so not in the name of revolution – although he tells the 1% that their bloody time may yet come – but in order that capitalism be snatched back from free market fundamentalism and put to the service of the many, not the few.

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The Price of Inequality is a powerful plea for the implementation of what Alexis de Tocqueville termed "self-interest properly understood". Stiglitz writes: "Paying attention to everyone else's self-interest – in other words to the common welfare – is in fact a precondition for one's own ultimate wellbeing… it isn't just good for the soul; it's good for business." Unfortunately, that's what those with hubris and pleonexia have never understood – and we are all paying the price.

and the price we're paying is horrific...

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