Der große Ausverkauf

[first lines]

[Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz is winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2001]

Joseph Stiglitz:
I once made a comparison between certain aspects of the way economic policy is done and modern warfare. Modern warfare has tried to de-humanize, to take out the sympathetic element. So you drop bombs from 15,000 feet; you don't know who they are landing on, you don't see the damage. You are flying very high up, and it's almost like a video game. You talk about "body counts" - de-humanizing the whole process. Same thing in economics: you talk about statistics and don't think about the people behind those statistics.