I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear. Thanks for joining us.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

Our democracy is now probably better described as $1, one vote, than one person one vote.

We have a tax system that reflects not the interest of the middle.

We have a tax system that reflects not the interest of the middle. We have a tax system that reflects the interest of the 1%.

Thanks for joining us.

Avoiding taxes has become a hallmark of America's business icons, Apple, Google, GE, and many more of the Fortune 500.

The nation's largest corporations are sitting

on more than $2 trillion in cash, while revenue from corporate income taxes has plummeted

from just below 40 percent in 1943 to just below 10 percent in 2012.

Government and big business have colluded to create what's tantamount to an unlimited IRA

for corporations.

That's not my term, although I wish I'd thought of it, because it explains so much about

what's gone wrong in a country where some 20 million workers who would like a full-time

job still can't get one. Yet the upper 1% of the population takes home a staggering 22.5%

of America's income while their effective federal income tax rate has dropped. Though the phrase

was coined by Joseph Stiglitz, a man imminently worth

quoting, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the world's most influential economists. Currently,

he's president of the International Economic Association, former chairman of the Council of Economic

Advisors under President Bill Clinton, and the author of best-selling

books that have shaped worldwide debates on globalization, income inequality, and the

role of government in the financial marketplace.

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