Joseph Stiglitz - How Inequality Is Killing the American Dream

This is just a short piece to point you to this article, by Joseph Stiglitz. It will likely NOT change your opinion about all of this, but it is a fine piece, with good information from a Nobel Prize winning economist.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-inequality-killing-american-dreamand-what-we-can-do-about-it?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

I say it won't make any difference, because I realize that any information provided to you that goes counter to what you believe, just serves to reinforce what you believe. BUT  . . . that said, I can't give up on trying to persuade you otherwise. That's the emotional energy that drives me.

I posted this on Facebook already - but I was afraid the few and the brave that actually follow this blog might miss that.

I found the article interesting because he points out an implication of this income inequality that I had not even considered. I thought it remote that we would descend to the class revolution that the French author Pickett seems to be predicting. I thought we might muddle through over time, with gradual shifts in tax and spending policies. Stiglitz thinks this disparity is much more dangerous. It could destroy the very things that make our place on the planet so valuable. We are likely to use our REAL power, our REAL influence - that we are something that others can strive to become. Military might is not the source of our power. The real source is that we represent the hope and inspiration of the huddled masses. And we are losing that. The Scandinavians seem to have figured it out.

As to his ideas as how to overcome it - they are all good. But they are all doomed to fail. They are based on rational thinking, factual ideas. People do not respond to that. We are emotional animals, we are selfish, we are protective of our sense of self, of our beliefs and biases. We do not gladly accept information counter to those.

What do you think?