The One Percent In Charge
The benefits continue to become more unevenly distributed in USA. The country's wealthiest one percent sits on 40 percent of the goods in society. But it will get themselves hurt, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who predicts a public uprising in the United States not unlike those we have seen in the Middle East

"The richest one percent in the U.S. have the best houses, the best doctors, the best educations, and their lifestyle can’t be matched. The richest one percent earns 25 percent of the nation's total income, and if you look at the country's gathered goods, only one percent manages 40 percent of these. 25 years ago was the same figure as 12 percent and 33 percent. But the money has apparently not been able to learn the wealthiest to understand that their destiny in the long run is bound up with how the other 99 percent of the population lives. "
The quote is from one of the world's most famous economists, the American Joseph Stiglitz, and can be read in the coming may-edition of the magazine Vanity Fair. Here is Stiglitz, who works as a professor at the University of Columbia in New York, taking an offensive attack on the increasingly unequal distribution of property and wealth in his country.

All power to the top
"All U.S. growth has benefited the top of society. When we look at difference in the United States, we now are lagging behind all nations in Europe, the countries we come closest in income distribution are Russia and Iran. Even the Latin American countries such as Brazil have been better to distribute the goods, lifting the poorest and close some of the gap between the richest and the rest," he says.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist does not give much for the so-called 'marginal productivity theory': that higher incomes for those who are best paid will benefit society through increased consumption and investment. This is the theory that neo-liberals and some neo-classical economists often use when they have to argue why inequality in a society in the long run benefits everyone.

"The evidences are too thin," says Stiglitz in the above-mentioned essay. The CEO’s are on the contrary, those who have helped to produce the economic slump, the world has found it self in over three years now, and while they wallowed in economic bonuses and massive wage increases.

The American Dream
What will the consequences of the increased disproportion for the United States be? Stiglitz believe they will be massive and serious. Firstly, because the increased inequality touches a fundamental core value on the very notion of the U.S. as a country where everyone can get to the top: The American dream that even though all aren’t born equal, then everyone have equal opportunities to end a far better place than where they come from.
And here he isn’t alone. The Greek-born social -commentator, author and successful founder of Internet media Huffington Post, Ariana Huffington, is talking about the same issue in his book from 2010, Third World America:

"If we do not adjust the course .... we indeed can end up as a third-world country. A country where there only exist two classes: the rich and everyone else. Think Mexico or Brazil, where the wealthy live behind fences guarded by men who swing the machineguns to keep kidnappers away. "

Stiglitz sees a third danger: that the economy simply stops to operate effectively when monopoles are allowed to dominate the economy, and when special groups through lobby-activities achieves certain tax benefits and special treatment. He gives an example:

"Too many of our most talented young people today choose to go into the financial world, because they are attracted to the astronomically economic benefits. But this sector is not productive and does not create the basis for a healthy economy. "

Finally, disproportion is a serious risk of under-investment in public goods, such as public health, research, education and infrastructure, which has historically been the basis for innovations like the web.

The new Middle East?
Such a development couldn’t work in the long run, predicts Stiglitz:

"It is precisely such unequal, unfair systems that gave rise to the rebellions, we have seen in recent months and weeks in the Middle East ... With a youth-unemployment in the U.S. at 20 percent (and in certain socio-economic groups and geographic areas, the figure is twice); with a situation where one out of six Americans want a full time job without being able to find one; with one in seven Americans rely only on food stamps ... we put the foundation for rebellion, similar to those we have seen in the Middle East, where millions of people have gone to the streets to protest against the political, economic and social conditions, they are offered by their communities."

"The richest looks nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses - are they next? And they are in their right to be nervous. We are talking about communities where less than one percent controls the share of wealth, and where corruption is common. Here is the richest in the way of development of society more equitable direction. And while we look at people's revolt in the streets, we should ask ourselves the question: When will this rebellion get to the United States? In several important areas, our country become like these distant troubled places. "