In an interview on Inequality

And you think that’s where we’ve got to in the US?

Yes. The real worry is that as inequality has increased in the US, and perhaps because the nature of our political system has changed for other reasons, money has started becoming much more important in politics. Politicians have become much more responsive to the wishes and the views and the voice of the very wealthy. That’s what Larry Bartels’s book, Unequal Democracy, is about. There are parts of it that you may agree with, there are parts of it you may not agree with, but I think it paints a very alarming picture of how our democracy has become much more unequal.

So elected officials don’t much listen as much to ordinary Americans as they do to rich people?

Exactly. And do we know that for sure? No. But I think Larry Bartels has provided enough suggestive evidence and there are lots of other case studies and anecdotal evidence that suggests that that is true. What is the cause? We know that much less well. Certainly some of it is because of lobbying and campaign contributions, but I’m not sure all of it is because of that. Some of it is because we have this image of being a meritocracy and American society respects the views of the very successful. The politicians like to hang out with the successful; they get their advice from the successful.

Jeff Sachs was giving a talk in Manhattan the other night about his new book, The Price of Civilization. He was spitting blood that Obama was in town again, not for constructive reasons, but to attend yet another fundraiser on the Upper East Side. Inevitably, rich people are going to have more influence when every politician from the president down constantly needs money from them.

They constantly need money, they like talking to them, they respect their opinion. Jeff Sachs and I have had many differences but in this case I fully agree with him.

That’s what’s interesting about Occupy Wall Street. Its supporters aren’t just crazy lefties who don’t believe in free markets, but respected economists.

I’m definitely in that camp. I do believe in markets. I passionately believe in the importance of property rights and private property. I think they are absolute sine qua nons for prosperity. But I also believe that these things are very political and the politics shouldn’t be one-sided. Gore Vidal said, “The United States has only one party – the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.” If that is true, that’s a real threat to a free market and a fair society. For that reason I think Occupy Wall Street is very important. It’s a grassroots movement that tries to stand up to this tendency of our political system.