Orwell inverted

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, Napoleon, the totalitarian pig says "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." 

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz turns the Orwellian dictum on its head by saying that "Some Are More Unequal Than Others" in America:

While rags-to-riches stories still grip our imagination, the fact of the matter is that the life chances of a young American are more dependent on the income and wealth of his parents than in any of the other advanced countries for which there is data. There is less upward mobility — and less downward mobility from the top — even than in Europe, and we’re not just talking about Scandinavia.

He means to say that inequality, like totalitarianism (where those in positions of absolute political power assume moral superiority above the rest), is not only a moral problem for our society, but a problem of social justice as well.

Unequal distribution of wealth intersects with unequal distribution of political power, as in contemporary America, according to Stiglitz, money holds the key to political power:

The fabric of our society and democracy is suffering. The worry is that those at the top are investing their money not in real investments, in real innovations, but in political investments. Their big contributions to the presidential and Congressional campaigns are, too often, not charitable contributions. They expect, and have received, high returns from these political investments. These political investments, exemplified by those the financial institutions made, yielded far higher returns than anything else they did. The investments bought deregulation and a huge bailout — though they also brought the economy to the brink of ruin and are a source of much of our inequality.

Market Fundamentalism

Nicholas Kristof reminds us of a concept that was floated by George Soros some years ago: Market fundamentalism.

A very unique and potent--more likely to become the dominant system of governance globally than other forms of fundamentalisms--kind of fundamentalism that writers like Hamid Mohsin (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Hari Kunzru alert our attention to.

[Market fundamentalism] is related to the glorification of wealth in the past two decades, to the celebration of opulence, and to the emergence of a new (global) aristocracy. Market fundamentalists assume a measure of social Darwinism and accept that Laissez-faire is always optimal.

But, as Kristof writes, market fundamentalism is also helixed together with the other kind of fundamentalism and together the two produce a particular kind of dystopic landscape, best represented by Waziristan:

And anyone who honestly believes that low taxes and unfettered free markets are always best should consider moving to Pakistan’s tribal areas. They are a triumph of limited government, negligible taxes, no “burdensome regulation” and free markets for everything from drugs to AK-47s.