stiglitz: yes.o, there are other provisions, like closing some of the loopholes which undermine the effectiveness of our tax rate. one of the striking things about our tax code is that it's not progressive. the people at the very top are paying a tax rate of just over 8% on their total income. well, ordinary people are paying a much higher tax rate. so there's an awful lot of money that can be raised by making our tax system fairer. amna: michael, what do you say to that? what are your concerns about raising taxes in that way to pay for these investments? michael: the president has a few goals. he wants to spend a lot more money. to his credit, he wants to raise taxes to pay for that spending, rather than run up deficits. and he wants to combat climate change. it seems to me that an obvious way to advance all three of those goals is to put in place a carbon tax. a carbon tax would raise a lot of revenue. a carbon tax is, in my view, the best way we have to address climate change and to encourage inn

joseph stiglitz is a nobel prize winning economist.97 to 2000 he was senior vice president and chief economist at the world bank. he now teaches at columbia university. michael strain is the director of economic policy studies at the american enterprise institute. he's also an opinion columnist for bloomberg. welcome to you both, gentlemen. thanks for being here. professor stiglitz, i'll come to you first on this. the details to have the plans are still being worked out wherever they end up. we're talking about a massive amount of spending that the president says is necessary for the country, necessary for the economy right now. do you agree? is it necessary or is this just something democrats want? >> no, it is necessary. you know, there are many things about america that are different from other advanced countries. we have the lowest life expectancy, a life expectancy that actually was decning in the years before the pandemic but has taken a real fall. we he one of the lowest labor force participation rates, the fraction of the popul

and we will talk to nobel prize-winning economist joseph stiglitz about how unemployment benefits for millions of u.s. workers expired on labor day, even as many states suffered the worst surge of the pandemic. and we will talk with him about faxing equity in the world. -- vaccine equity in the world. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. in afghanistan, the taliban has announced its acting government in kabul. the cabinet does not include any women or any members of the former afghan government. mohammad hassan akhund, a close aide to the deceased taliban founder mohammad omar, was named acting prime minister. abdul ghani baradar, a talan co-founder, will be his deputy. sirajuddin haqqani, the interior minister, is on the fbi's most wanted list for a 2008 attack in kabul that killed six people. this comes as protests grow across afghanistan. hundreds of men and women rallied in kabul tuesday, with demonstrators calling on pakistan to stop intervening to aid the taliban. two people reportedly died tuesday

grote -- joe stiglitz emphasized it is about growth sustaining to allow debt to continue.ve a confidence we can sustain growth to take on this new debt burden? barry: i am worried about debt sustainability going forward. we have a chapter that focuses on that. i think productive investments in infrastructure and social infrastructure will more than pay for themselves. we are sending a copy of the book to senator manchin. lisa: there also a question about what productive means. do you get a sense which investments pay dividends in which spending could be problematic? barry: we look in the book at positive and negative examples of railway that honduras tried for two centuries to build across the isthmus and failed. it is clear investments in early childhood education more than pay for themselves if you're sufficiently patient. lisa: would you go so far as to extent this argument into modern monetary theory, this idea that if you borrow money and give it out to all of the consumers come in particular lower income ones, they will spend it and that will do the growth. you would