The Harper's version reveals a Stiglitz totally imprisoned mentally by learning "elementary economics." He can't rid himself of it.
Some sentences plucked from the Harper's piece:
1. "But what is practiced in the United States today is perhaps best described as an ersatz capitalism designed to create inequalities."
I.e. not as designed by economists in the textbooks, but by some other unnamed designer. Actually existing capitalism isn't real capitalism?
2. "The most innovative and successful industries in the U.S. economy (tech and biotech) rest on foundations provided by government research."
How is he measuring "successful" in that sentence? Profits? If so, those profits rest on patents and copyright, i.e. control over supply, leading to monopoly profits, which he later defines as "rents" and decries.
3. "While Piketty tells us that market capitalism naturally creates obscene levels of inequality, I believe we have a different problem: our markets don't act as competitive markets. [Well, yes, there's that.] We learn in the most elementary economics courses that competitive markets, which promote efficiency and innovation drive profits down."
So capitalism isn't like our most elementary economics courses. WE COULD FIX THE ELEMENTARY ECONOMICS COURSES or we could eliminate "rents." Stiglitz seems to divide capitalists into the good kind, selling at marginal cost, and the bad kind, seeking rents. (He names Bill Gates and Carlos Slim) And he'd try some taxes to get rid of the bad kind of capitalists.
This is really a sad Stiglitz confession -- unintended confession -- that "elementary economics" is a crime.
This effort by Stiglitz seems like a wonderful opportunity for a progressive econ teacher to show how bad "elementary economics" is.
Gene