《The Price of Inequality》读后感1000字

《The Price of Inequality》是一本由Joseph E. Stiglitz著作，W. W. Norton & Company出版的Hardcover图书，本书定价：USD 27.95，页数：448，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《The Price of Inequality》读后感(一)：尝试把这本书当成是在讲中国...

作为一个中国人，读这本书的时候，就会发现其实这本书里面讲的虽然是美国的贫富分化问题，但其实这些问题中国都有。 有时候再想，会不会里面描述的那些因为贫富分化出现的消极影响其实一直在影响中国，但是媒体和学术界一直都没有提起过呢？

我每次见到那些那些说支持mitt romney的人我就很想用这本书打他们的脸...

《The Price of Inequality》读后感(二)：不是一本适合茶余饭后阅读的书

有两种书会让人想要写书评，一种是你感同身受极为推崇的书，另一种就是完全相反的情况。The Price of Inequality，就是第二种。

但不能说它不是一本好书。这本书是我Social Justice and Social Policy课上的读本，老师挑选了几节用于课堂讨论，但讨论的内容都是围绕时事或案例，其中掺杂一些各个学者的理论而已。既然是多于一个学者，就意味着这里有不同的观点，这里有思想的碰撞。而我自己也有我看事情的角度与想问题的思路，难免就对每本书、每个学者的观点有着不一样的看法。

首先，这本书不太好读（对于英语是第二门语言并且从小生活在国内的我来说）。与很多其他阅读作业比较，这本书读起来很费劲。有的书，虽然语言也复杂，但是满篇满篇的案例，倒也吸引你继续读下去，但是这本书没有太多的案例，也没有太多的数据，属于纯用语言分析型文章，所以不太吸引我。

其次，我不喜欢他的观点。起初，我并没有太多的喜好。老实说，这种要不是课本我完全不会碰的书即使被要求阅读我也不会津津有味的读下去，不过是大概了解一下体系，上课好有话说罢了。但是这周又看了一篇J. Norberg2004年刊登在The American Enterprise上的文章”Three Cheers for Global Capitalism”，我非常喜欢，而这之后，我便读不下去The Price of Inequality了。

Norberg的文章条理清晰并且让我信服，我本身极为赞同达尔文的适者生存，与邓爷爷的“先让一部分人富起来”，也同样认为整体上我们的社会是不断进步的。社会的进步不是以不平等为代价的，贫富差距不是社会的进步造成的。当然你可以理论政府在其中的角色扮演，但自由市场以及科技发展是没有必要为不平等负责任的。在我看来，贫富差距的反面不是贫富无差距，而是一起穷。政府必然做的不够好，但是富人没有错，那些财富不是他们自己努力获取的，就是努力获取财富的人赋予他们的。如果打消了积极性，没有人创造财富了，大家一起穷，政府也穷，穷更穷。

这本书里让我印象深刻并匪夷所思的一个词叫做Skill-biased technological change，能力偏倚的科技变化。它说到原来制造业创造出了一批中产，但随着科技发展与全球化，工厂少了，很多人下岗了，变穷了，因为他们没有适应科技发展的能力，可是他们没有错，为啥遭殃了，因为这种科技变化，是能力偏倚的科技变化。（原谅我拗口且可能不准确的翻译）我觉得用这个来说inequality有点牵强，那也许很多在制造业时代处于劣势的人在新的时代终于迎来了他们的春天呢。就好比每个行业都有自己的起起落落，每个国家也有，如果用30年河东，30年河西来比喻，我看也挺公平的。

当我们只看到一部分人，很容易说某件事对他们不公平。你可以在这一章里讲这群人，下一章讲那群人，整本书看下来，这个世界实在是太不公平了，大家都很愤怒，可这样的书看起来就没有意义了，你不过是给每个新闻头条附上个理论依据而已。

事实上，这章的既得利益者也许就是下一章的受害人，也许反复轮回，这个世界也挺公平的...

《The Price of Inequality》读后感(三)：The Tide is Turning

There is no such a thing whose name is perfect, even the market system needs continuous modification, Smith's theory is older than 200 years now, anyway. Certain extent of bias exists in everyone's mind. To read is to know what others think, understand different perspectives and therefore broaden our mind and remove those biases, as possible as we can.

It is clear that Stiglitz holds the view that government should be performing a more active role in America to promote a more sounding market system, and the power of the top 1 percent should be significantly restricted. The view, which is in contrast with that of Milton Fredman who supports a more free market system, focuses more on the equality and justice of our society. In the long-run, Stiglitz puts it, looking out for the other guy isn't just good for the soul, it's good for business.

I am with Stiglitz that equality is the most important factor to have a stable and efficient economy in the long run.

1. Three themes resonated around the world: that markets weren't working the way they were supposed to, for they were obviously neither efficient nor stable; that the political system hadn't corrected the market failures; and that the economic and political systems are fundamentally unfair.

2. Unemployment-the inability of the market to generate jobs for so many citizens- is the worst failure of the market, the greatest source of inefficiency, and a major cause of inequality.

3. While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.

4. Even as a myth, the belief that everyone had a fair chance had its uses: it motivated people to work hard. It seemed we were all in the same boat; even if some were, for the moment, traveling first-class while others stayed in steerage.

5. As Mitt Romney put it, inequality is the kind of thing that should be discussed quietly and privately. The poor, in this land of opportunity, have only themselves to blame.

6. As the ancient Greek historian Thucydides famously said, 'right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must'.

7. With the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which emphasized the dignity of the individual, and with the Industrial Revolution, which led to the emergence of a vast urban underclass, it became imperative to find new justifications for inequality, especially as critics of the system, like Marx, talked about exploitation.

8. As one of the successful players in this game put it, the old adage 'Win or lose, what matters is how you play the game' is rubbish. All that matters is whether you win or lose.

9. America's patent laws have been doing exactly that. They are designed not to maximize the pace of innovation but rather to maximize rents.

10. Particularly given the narrative created by the Chicago school of economics, there is a tendency not to interfere with the 'free' workings of the market, even when the outcome is anticompetitive. And there are good political reasons not to take too strong a position: after all, it's antibusiness - and not good for campaign contributions - to be too rough on, say, Microsoft.

11. When we wonder how it is that the financiers get so much wealth, part of the answer is simple: they've helped write a set of rules that allows them to do well, even in the crises that they help create.

12. To see how asymmetric globalization can affect bargaining power, imagine, for a moment, what the world would be like if there was free mobility of labor, but no mobility of capital. Countries would compete to attract workers. They would promise good schools and a good environment, as well as low taxes on workers. This could be financed by high taxes on capital. But that's not the world we live in, and that's partly because the 1 percent doesn't want it to be that way.

13. I and, as far as I know, most progressives - do not argue for full equality. We realize that that would weaken incentives. The question is, how seriously would incentives be weakened if we had a little bit less inequality？

14. Greed may be an inherent part of human nature, but that doesn't mean there is nothing we can do to temper the consequences of unscrupulous bankers who would exploit the poor and engage in anticompetitive practices.

15. Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF's mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.

16. As the old Russian adage had it, 'They pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work'.

17. In those instances where private rewards of those at the top exceed by a considerable amount their marginal social contribution, redistribution could both reduce inequality and increase efficiency.

18. Individuals can often be better motivated by intrinsic rewards - by the satisfaction of doing a job well - than by extrinsic rewards (money).

19. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.

20. Perceptions of unfairness affect behavior. If individuals believe that their employer is treating them unfairly, they are more likely to shirk on the job.

21. Most Americans now realize how essential it is that our political process be reformed in ways that make it more responsive to the wishes of the majority and that diminish the power of money.

22. Extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger？

23. Proponents of financial markets like to claim that one of the virtues of open capital markets is that they provide 'discipline'. But the markets are a fickle disciplinarian, giving an A rating one moment and turning around with an F rating the next. Even worse, the financial markets' interests frequently do not coincide with those of the country. The markets are shortsighted and have a political and economic agenda that seeks the advancement of the well-being of financiers rather than that of the country as a whole.

24. But in spite of the financial market's ideological commitment to what is called capital market liberalization (allowing capital to move freely in and out of a country) - an ideology consistent with the markets' self-interest - in fact such liberalization doesn't promote economic growth; it does, however, lead to increased instability and inequality.

25. China is already the second-largest global economy, the second-largest trading economy, the largest manufacturing economy, the largest saver, and the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

26. The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

27. As we noted in chapter 4, what was called incentive pay was anything but that: pay was high when performance was high, but pay was still high when performance was low. Only the name changed. When performance was low, the named changed to ‘retention pay’.

28. Surely elites in the UK would have preferred that Enlightenment idea had not crossed the Atlantic. Slave owners in the South would have liked to keep the expression ‘all men are created equal’ more narrowly defined.

29. Change often occurs less rapidly than it seems that it should, and the slow evolution of ideas is one of the reasons that societies sometimes change slowly.

30. On one day alone, May 6, 2010, stock market prices plummeted so much that the Dow Jones temporarily lost about 10 percent of its value, including a nearly 600-point drop in a five-minute period. Before the end of the day, the market regained much of its value nearly as fast as it had been lost. No one could claim that the real value of the country's assets had diminished in that short period of time. Yet, constant reference to 'price discovery' and 'efficient markets' provided the halo that made this kind of flash trading seem not only acceptable but even desirable.

31. In democratic societies, even given the power of the wealthy to control the media and shape perceptions, it is impossible to completely suppress ideas. And when these ideas resonate with so many citizens, they can take on a life of their own.

32. Growing inequality, combined with a flawed system of campaign finance, risks turning America's legal system into a travesty of justice. Some may still call it the 'rule of law', but in today's America the proud claim of 'justice for all' is being replaced by the more modest claim of 'justice for those who can afford it'. And the number of people who can afford it is rapidly diminishing.

33. Still another myth is that the poor have only themselves to blame. The unemployed are jobless because they are lazy. They haven't searched hard enough.

34. The 1 percent has captured and distorted the budget debate - using an understandable concern about overspending to provide cover for a program aimed at downsizing the government, an action that would weaken the economy today, lower growth in the future, and, most importantly for the focus of this book, increase inequality.

35. A central thesis of current conventional wisdom is that central banks should be independent. If they are subject to political forces, so the thinking goes, politicians will manipulate monetary policy for their short-run advantage at a long-run cost.

36. None of this should be surprising: an independent central bank, captured by the financial sector, is going to make decisions that represent the beliefs and interest of the financial sector.

37. Inflation targeting was based on three questionable hypotheses. The first is that inflation is the supreme evil; the second is that maintaining low and stable inflation was necessary and almost sufficient for maintaining a high and stable real growth rate; the third is that all would benefit from low inflation.

38. Those who, in the depths of the Great Depression, said that market forces would eventually prevail and restore the economy to full employment, Keynes retorted to the effect that, yes, in the long run markets may work, but in the long run we're all dead.

39. We can judge our system by its results, and if we do so, we have to give it a failing grade: a little while ago those at the bottom and in the middle got a glimpse of the American dream, but today's reality is that for a large segment of the population that dream has now vanished.

40. All human institutions are fallible; all have their weakness. No one proposes abolishing large corporations because so many exploit their workers or damage the environment or engage in anticompetitive practices. Rather, we recognize the dangers, we impose regulations, we attempt to alter behavior, knowing that we will never fully succeed, but that these reforms can improve behavior.

41. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook. Rather, he was suggesting the opposite: it was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn't just good for the soul; it's good for business.