Following the publication of a report on global inequality for next week’s G20 summit in South Africa, more than 500 economists and scientists are calling for action to address the issue that was called an emergency by the lead author of the report — Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz — according to a story in Politico.eu.
“We are profoundly concerned, as they are, that extreme concentrations of wealth translate into undemocratic concentrations of power, unravelling trust in our societies and polarizing our politics,” read the letter as quoted in Politico, referring to the findings of a G20 research committee led by noted American economist Joseph Stiglitz.
South Africa’s president named Stiglitz to head six-member taskforce to examine global wealth inequality and its impact on growth, poverty and multilateralism that will report its findings to the G20 summit in Johannesburg next week (download the report).
Stiglitz is a Nobel Laureate in economics and is a University Professor at Columbia Business School. He co-chairs the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and is the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. He is also a member of the advisory board of Columbia’s Center for Political Economy, part of Columbia World Projects.
