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It is an important book for both liberals and conservatives alike. It's a great divide is always thought provoking and he joins us now. I want to start with Gary Indiana and you've got one quote here on page 150. I fear America could be at the same place as your childhood. How do you take the Gary Indiana that you grew up with and bring that over to all of America in 2015 . Well when I was growing up in Gary Indiana which is the quintessential symbol of American industrial. It was like coal . It was founded in 1986. It was the largest integrated steel mill in the world. But I remember growing up seeing you know great inequality rampant discrimination episodic economy going up and down. My my classmates parents were being laid off. You know every every couple of year every few years and I saw a divided society. I saw this great divide between even then everybody was you might say struggling right but between the top and the bottom then you go Joe the inequality and of course your political economic take on it to a quote I'm going your way . Courtney bring up the quote right now. The first quote we've got here from the great divide and of course this is Joe Stiglitz talking about the truck from Gary the standard economic text of his time seem to be unrelated to the reality I had witnessed growing up in Gary. So you go off to school and you're like Wait you're kidding me. Are we still at that point today where the textbooks aren't accurate. Absolutely. You know the textbooks that I was referring to where the books Dax said this is the best of all possible worlds markets are efficient markets are are you know stable. And this notion that economists use radio efficiency and to me it the picture they were trying to say is this wonder is that market led to the best of all possible worlds. And I said that's the best of all worlds. It's that kind of world that I wanted I want to change that world. Our Peter Cook is speaking today with Paul Ryan . He didn't grow up too far from you in a troubled challenged manufacturing Midwest. When you look at the inequality today and the coming political debate and that's a lot in the great divide. Let's start with the Democrats. What did they get wrong. I mean I mean you're a great supporter of liberal politics. All the conservatives hate you. Let's flip it. What did the Democrats get wrong over the last number of years on inequality. They got a lot wrong. I'll just list a few. One of them was they deregulation you know that began under Carter got much stronger under Reagan but then continued under Clinton . We had the repeal of the Glass-Steagall. We. I gotta admit that worked out well. You know we we passed a law that said you couldn't regulate derivatives and you know those exploit what Warren Buffett himself described as weapons financial weapons of mass destruction and we had to bail out one company AIG to the tune of a hundred and eighty billion dollars going into the debate to stay in the Democrats. Right. Now what does Secretary Clinton have to do to speak to the middle class besides walk into a Tripoli somewhere in the vicinity of Gary Indiana. Well I think there are two parts. I think we have to understand that it's not just a matter of redistribution. That it's the way our whole economic system has been working that has led to even before tax wages being very unequal America is the country now with a larger highest level of inequality among all the advanced countries and among the lowest level equality of opportunity which means that the life chances of young American are more dependent on income and education of his parents than in other countries. And that's because of time. Joe I want to flip it here. Rachel the Joe get his medication. OK. Good we can ask this question. What did the Republicans get right . You've been a sharp critic but there's something about a Republican ethos going back to Lincoln about private enterprise growth and free markets. What are the Republicans gotten right is they go with many candidates going back to the origins of the Republicans as you mentioned they were against slavery they were against one of the organization all of it and you know what they really fought for that strongly but they've lost some of that to the last Reagan your critics your critics raved Reagan pivot . Yeah I think that that was a moment where they lost that passion for creating a more equal society. There were other things that particular Republicans have been very strong for strong about . You know this is Earth Day today was important to the environment. Bloomberg was very strong and trying to push the environmental agenda worried about out climate change. Mitt Romney up in Massachusetts was very concerned about inequality in access to health. And so there's this Mason thing with the Republicans. Maybe they could come back to let me go to the debate of the moment I think of the IMF meetings in the heat of Lawrence Summers speaking with his colleague Ken Rogoff about secular stagnation. I I assume you tilt towards Professor Summers but state with currency adjustment in with your Nobel Prize the information that's out there how we can be structurally optimistic about the American economic experiment . The bottom line is over two to three years we go up don't we . Yes but we are in a troubled time and you look at over the last quarter century you ask has the American economy been working for most of us. You know it's been working. GDP has been good not as good as it was from 1950 to 1980 but GDP has been going up. But when you look at the middle and the majority of America their income adjusted for inflation lower lower than it was 25 years ago and that's one of the points of making the great divide. Something has happened to the American economy so that it's not working for most of America. Joe one thing you do that's great. I think even the arch Republican conservatives would give you credit for this as you do show a prescription . Your prescription I think within the great divide is a surprise . You look to Singapore and to the very different a different economy. Australia is being people that get inequality and the battle over inequality right. What is Sydney and what is Singapore. Right. Well what they they they have recognised is that this is a major point in the book that inequality is a matter of choice. It's it's a result not just a market forces know these market forces are global but they say the way we shape those market forces and what we do with them can make a very big difference to the nature of our society. So what they've succeeded in doing in Australia that will I'm sure Leto much higher growth over the long run is they said every student in their country can get access to a college education through a program that they call income contingent loans. So you borrow money but while you're borrowing money to finance your car they really hate radically different that if you go into teaching you pay less than if you go into banking. I've got just one minute left. How do you respond to the classic Joe Stiglitz criticism . All you want to do is raise taxes on the rich. How do you respond to that. And all I'm saying is that's absolutely wrong because what I say it's about the structure of the economy . It's about corporate governance laws that allow the CEOs to take more pay home an ineffective enforcement of antitrust laws that create more market power. You ask a simple question Why is it over the last 40 years that average productivity of work American workers have doubled our workers are more productive but their pay has been absolutely stagnant. That's a reflection of market power. Who was that other economists from Gary Indiana. I can't remember what Paul Samuelson Samuelson cool that folks. Gary Ind. Paul Samuelson and Joe Stiglitz that is a per capita economic laureate said I don't think any other city in the country or the world can mimic just fabulous Joe Stiglitz a new book is The Great Divide .