Stiglitz Says U.S. Taxes Need Overhaul to Fix Policies
The U.S. must overhaul its tax system because lower rates on investment income unfairly punish wage- earners, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.
“It’s absolutely essential that we have a fair tax system and one that directs our economic activity to production not to speculation,” Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview on “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene.
“If you have a tax system in which people at the very top pay half the rate of somebody who is working hard for their income simply because they get their income from speculation, that’s an unfair system,” said Stiglitz, 69, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. “It’s a distorting system. It leads to lower economic growth.”
Stiglitz appeared to discuss his new book, “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Kearns in Washington at jkearns3@bloomberg.net; Tom Keene in New York at tkeene@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz
Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, talks about U.S. income inequality and tax policy. He speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg)
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