The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy [Paperback]

'Compelling.... the central arguments of Lansley's book - and the solutions he proposes - deserve a wide hearing and an urgent place on the policy agenda.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'Stewart Lansley's The Cost of Inequality exposes the truth about the economic catastrophe that afflicts the western world: neoliberalism has created consumer societies in which millions are so poor that they cannot afford to consume.' Peter Wilby - Book of the Year New Statesman 'Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reasons behind the astonishing growth in inequality in the UK and US over the past 30 years and why it helped to bring about the unprecedented economic crisis we are all now facing. Readable, well-argued and a devastating critique of neo-liberal laissez-faire economics that has allowed the growth of a new generation of super-rich Robber Barrons by economist and financial journalist Stewart Lansley.' Nial Cooper, Church Action on Poverty 'Lansley's new work belongs on every people's library shelf in an Occupy movement encampment. Your bookshelf, too.' Too Much --1

Why does the modern economy consist of two tracks: a fast one for the super-rich and a stalled one for everyone else? What decisions led to this split three decades ago, and were their goals realised? What is the cost of a two-track economy? Have the real solutions to the 2008-9 crisis been missed? This ground-breaking book, based on years of research, seeks to answer these questions and provide the hard evidence: - for the economic case for dismantling the economy for the super-rich; - that deregulation failed to deliver innovation and economic revival; - for new policies that avoid the looming permanent recession. At a time when top investors such as Warren Buffett call for an end to the coddling of billionaires, this urgent, provocative book provides a radical new way of thinking for ending the economic deadlock.

Stewart Lansley is an economist, financial journalist and award-winning TV producer. A research fellow at the University of Bristol, he is the author of Poor Britain (with Joanna Mack), Rich Britain and a biography of Philip Green. He has written for academic and specialist journals as well as the Guardian, Independent and Sunday Times, and has held academic posts at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the Universities of Reading and Brunel. He lives in London.