Who’s Who of Prominent Economists and Investors Say that Runaway Inequality Harms the Economy

by WashingtonsBlog

Growing Consensus that Inequality Causes Economic Downturns

A who’s-who’s of prominent economists in government and academia have all said that runaway inequality harms economic growth, including:

• Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin (more)

• Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair

• Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman

• Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

• One of America’s leading economists, Robert Shiller

• Former chief IMF economist Raghuram Rajan

• Former U.S. Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich

• Stanford University professor John Taylor

• University of Oregon professor Mark Thoma

• University of California professor Emmanuel Saez

• Paris School of Economics professor Thomas Piketty

• Famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith

• Harvard Business School professor David Moss

• Paris School of Economics professor Romain Rancière

• London School of Economics professor Robert Wade

• University of Notre Dame professor David Ruccio

• Harvard professor Lawrence Katz

• Arkansas State University professor Christopher Brown

• Global economy and development division director at Brookings and former economy minister for Turkey, Kemal Dervi

• World Bank economist Branko Milanovic

• Deputy Division Chief of the Modeling Unit in the Research Department of the IMF, Michael Kumhof

• IMF economist Andrew Berg (IMF economist)

• IMF economist Jonathan Ostry

• Federal Reserve chairman from 1934 to 1948, Marriner S. Eccles

• And many others

Even Fed chair Ben Bernanke has admitted that inequality harms the productivity and efficiency of the economy (video continues here).

Numerous investors and entrepreneurs agree, including:

• More than half of all international investors polled by Bloomberg

• Billionaire Warren Buffet

• Billionaire Nick Hanauer

• Numerous other billionaires and top investors