[Economics] Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz on the ‘myth’ of the American Dream, the economic noose hanging

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As Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia professor and Nobel laureate, touts his new book “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society,” he has a two-fold message: The American Dream is a myth and freedom isn’t free. And especially when it comes to Gen Z, the generation that shook the political landscape with a protest movement headquartered steps from Stiglitz’s office, he tells Fortune he’s “had a lot of discussions with various people trying to understand what’s going on.” Stiglitz says the protest movement gripping his institution and many others “does hit home” and recalled his own history as a civil-rights protester in the 1960s. “This may sound hard to believe,” he says, “but I was there in the march in Washington in August 1963, with Martin Luther King. And I was there when he gave the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.” This had an influence on his thinking as a young man, he says, and “an enormous impact on the direction of our country, at least for a while.” This mournful tone fits much of Stiglitz’s career, as the left-leaning economist and author finds himself in increasingly lonely company: the pro-capitalist progressive. Opinion polls widely indicate a disaffection with capitalism among some millennials and more Gen Zers, exemplified by the surprising electoral successes in the last decade of the so-called Democratic Socialists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. But Stiglitz has all along maintained that socialism is not the answer; rather, a well-regulated capitalism is sorely needed. At the same time, he has decried the hard-right turn in American political and business culture, to the point where he doubts the impact of Reverend King’s famous speech.

https://fortune.com/2024/05/26/joseph-stiglitz-interview-gen-z-donald-trump-american-dream-neoliberalism/