Stiglitz to the Tories: No more austerity, please—and don’t forget about inequality

For the past week or so, the Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph E Stiglitz has been in the UK promoting his new book, The Great Divide. The title refers, of course, to inequality, which Stiglitz thinks saps democratic legitimacy and undermines the economy. Indeed, the economics of inequality is the principal theme of the essays and articles collected in the book. “Sustained economic growth,” Stiglitz writes, “can’t happen when the vast majority of…