The official blog of Stathis Kassios for Business, Media, Economics & Arts

My current read is ''The Price of Inequality'' written by Joseph E. Stiglitz (winner of the Nobel prize for Economics). I am sharing some excerpts from the book that I believe will provide some food for thought on global markets, their impact on local economies and why there is so much inequality  nowadays between rich and poor people,  stemming from bad government policies or market regulations that favor the top 1%. ''The theory that came to dominate, begininning in the second half of the nineteenth century-and still does-was called ''marginal productivity theory'';those with higher productivities earned higher incomes that reflected their greater contribution to society. Competitive markets, working through the laws of supply and demand, determine the value of each individual's contributions. If someone has a scarce and valuable skill, the market will reward him amply, because of his greater contribution to output. If he has no ski...

The current problems of the Greek government are directly related to decreasing public expenditures through imposing more and more taxes upon its citizens and domestic economy. Under constant pressure from EU's bureaucrats in order for Greece to receive a new round of loans and re-capitalize its banks, the limited time left to find alternative sources for tax revenues, create a hostile environment for the private sector and the real economy.  Imbalances in the government's budget, negatively distort the real economy. Companies remain non-competitive because of the amount of taxes they have to pay and because they can not be financed in a healthy way anymore.  Even if a myopic political party achieves to present a significant decrease in the government's deficit, it can irreversibly hurt thousands of small and medium size businesses, further increase unemployment and establish a new problematic status quo for the employer (more taxes and insurance contributions) ...