Occupy Wall Street and the global trend against inequality. - by Joseph E. Stiglitz

The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt and then to Spain, has now engulfed Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enable social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right—at least not without strong pressure from the street.

In May, I went to the site of the Tunisian protests. In July, I talked to Spain’s indignados. From there, I went to meet the young Egyptian revolutionaries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. And last month I talked with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. There is a common theme, expressed by the OWS movement in a simple phrase: “We are the 99 percent.”

That slogan echoes the title of my recent article "Of the 1 Percent, for the 1 Percent, and by the 1 Percent", the enormous increase in inequality in the United States: 1 percent of the population controls more than 40 percent of the wealth and receives more than 20 percent of the income. And those in this rarefied stratum often are rewarded so richly not because they have contributed more to society—bonuses and bailouts neatly gutted that justification for inequality—but because they are, to put it bluntly, successful (and sometimes corrupt) rent-seekers

.For more: Occupy Wall Street and the global trend against inequality. - Slate Magazine