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The Conscience of a Liberal

by Paul Krugman (Goodreads Author)

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 2,658 ratings · 298 reviews

With this major new volume, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, studies the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class Am...more

Hardcover, 296 pages

Published September 17th 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 2007)

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Feb 24, 2008 Dylan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: political-philosophy, economics

In the 1990s Paul Krugman famously asserted that 70% of the wealth that had been accumulated between 1977-1989 belonged to the top 1% of the population. Those facts still remain, but history has distorted the legacy of President Reagan, turning an actor and communicator into a great policy maker. The truth is that for the average American, Ronald Reagan was anything but a great policy maker. In fact, he was the ultimate creator of the income inequality that we live with today.

In 2007, with a cri...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Xox rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A must read for those who want to understand how the economy policies in the US being shaped by the political parties power.

The Republicans screwed things over because they don't like the policy that shorten the gap between the rich and the poor. The CEO get rich because of some fucking stupid reason. And Nixon was not the bad guy when it comes to policy, Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan are the real bad guys.

Gingrich screwed things over by limiting the budget for the operation of the government...more

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Nov 21, 2011 Bobby rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

Krugman already has one Nobel (for economics); he should get another for writing about economic policy in a way that's actually easy to understand and enjoyable! In this surprisingly fast read he explains--among other things--the fundamental goals of "movement conservatism," the historical context of FDR's era and the New Deal, and the worsening social inequality that has been going on for the last few decades. It's refreshing to hear intelligent arguments backed up with data, though Krugman doe...more

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Dec 16, 2009 sheena rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-japan

You want to understand how the two major political parties came to be what they are today.

You're curious about how racism and the history of slavery play an uncomfortable but undeniable role in America's resistance to provide her citizens with the care and basic support other wealthy nations deem fundamental.

Also you're an elitist baby-killing commie.

Well, that means you want to read this book.

Krugman demystifies the surge of movement conservatism and calls on liberals to be progressive in their...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman takes us on a journey from the New Deal's advent to its creation; relates the resulting three-decade era of relative prosperity, equality, and bipartisanship; navigates the rise of "movement conservatism" and the assaults on the New Deal (and thus on equality) which occurred from the early 1970s through the present; and finally prescribes an agenda for the (predicted) Democratic congressional majority and presidency in 2009, with a focus on socialized health insur...more

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Mar 09, 2008 Pete Sikora rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: commies in training

What's with the well-reasoned arguments and incontrovertible facts, Paul? Enough with the "evidence" and "studies". I mean, why do you want to show that your arguments are correct with actual data. Jeez.

But seriously, folks. Krugman writes like the really good teaching economist that he is. This book rocks.

He's got a great - if not entirely original - dissection of the right wing movement's growth. Ditto arguments on income inequality and health care. He's got this great teaching manner that is...more

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Apr 04, 2008 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Alayne, Katijane, Amber, Nate

Did you know that, at the start of the 1970s, the highest tax rate was 70 percent, as opposed to 35 percent now? This is the kind of thing you learn from The Conscience of a Liberal.

I love PK; I think he is heaven sent. In fact, he just became my best friend. This book falls just short of a perfect read, but I doubt very much that many agree with me. In it, Krugman is trying to sell the welfare state by coherent economic argument - bril! I love that he is unabashed in his desire for a progressiv...more Did you know that, at the start of the 1970s, the highest tax rate was 70 percent, as opposed to 35 percent now? This is the kind of thing you learn from The Conscience of a Liberal.

I love PK; I think he is heaven sent. In fact, he just became my best friend. This book falls just short of a perfect read, but I doubt very much that many agree with me. In it, Krugman is trying to sell the welfare state by coherent economic argument - bril! I love that he is unabashed in his desire for a progressive movement. Nothing is made moderate or watered down; his arguments are based on a highly controversial assertion: that race and racial politics is the primary reason that the United States lags so far behind other advanced modern countries in terms of its establishment of a social safety net and permanent limitations on inequality. V V interesting. The fact is that I have totally bought into the propaganda from the movement conservatives, and this book revealed this to me. Specifically, I felt as though universal, government-supported health insurance was a great and necessary thing in theory, but that it would be a hugely difficult (if not impossible) task in practice. NOT saying that we shouldn't endeavor it anyway, just saying that it does not make sense to compare our potential system to the system in France or even Britain. The United States is like no other modern country, in its size, its amount of wealth power and influence, its level of income and opportunity equality, and its history of race relations. It is foolish to think that the evidence from any other country is easily applied to the US; HOWEVER, PK very gracefully admits this and simultaneously offers proof that none of these facts of the United State's singularity should be a significant hindrance to the goal of providing universal health insurance, something he argues needs to be the cornerstone of a progressive agenda. Achieving universal health insurance is the last unfinished goal of FDR's New Deal, and should be the accomplishment that re-establishes the faith of the United States citizenry in the welfare state, faith that has been maliciously eroded by a very scary bloc of movement conservatives. Anyway, the book is great, it's a quick read and very accessible. HIGHLY recommended for anyone interested in serious political change with a slight economic edge to their thinking.

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Jan 19, 2008 Mateo rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you're an unreconstructed lefty like me, you'll enjoy Paul Krugman's unapologetically liberal--emphatically not radical--new book. If you're not, you may find the book contains some surprising facts, figures, and conclusions.

Krugman's thesis is that, against conventional wisdom, politics have driven economics, and not vice-versa, over the last 30 or so years of right-wing dominance, resulting in the profoundly unequal society we live in. He claims that before the Reagan Revolution (which had...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: political

The weakness of this book is that it is largely preaching to the choir. Yes, the national Republican Party is run by a bunch of lying bastards who hate minorities, the poor, democracy, and Christianity. BUT...you've either accepted that or you've closed your eyes in denial. Writing a partisan tract isn't going to change anyone's mind.

The best part of the book is a history of the evolution of the Republican party in the twentieth century. Krugman layers this with comparisons of how the economy is...more

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Nov 06, 2007 Benjamin Church rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those hoping the democrats don't choose hillary

Paul Krugman is obviously a remarkably intelligent writer and political economist and this book is a concise and convincing case for the reinstitution of welfare state politics as the backbone of a resurgent democratic political party. Hopefully something like what Krugman hopes for will actually happen, but I'm not too hopeful. Remember Bush? Anyway, not too dry and strongly agrued in its appeal to Keynesian and New Deal economic theories instead of just a basic appeal to help out the less fort...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-politics

Outstanding book. Krugman’s historical treatment of the conservative movement and the politics of race is unflinching. I’ve heard the criticism that he often cherry picks his facts in order to bolster an argument however, the data he presents leaves his call for a return to New Deal style policies and progressive taxation on solid ground. His presentation of all the detrimental effects of movement conservatism is spot on. This book sums up what should be the core beliefs of the modern democratic...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Erik rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman

Krugman, who just garnered a Nobel Prize in Economics this past year, is an unapologetic liberal. Or more specifically, as he likes to re-clarify at the end of his two-hundred-some page treatise, progressive. Coming out just a year before the recent election of the Democratic candidate to the U.S. Presidency and the economic fallout of eight years of Republican policies – effectively a mass repudiation of the cronyism and bullishness of movement conser...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Edward rated it 4 of 5 stars

50 years ago I read Barry Goldwater’s CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE and became a follower of Barry, even voted for him in l964. Now I find myself in Krugman’s camp. Granted this is no Damascus lightning bolt, but has it taken me half a century to find political wisdom? Or is it a half century slide into foolishness?
Leaving aside reasons why I made such a autobiographical u-turn, interesting or boring as they might be, Krugman makes sense to me today. He argues that Democrats are the TRUE conser...more 50 years ago I read Barry Goldwater’s CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE and became a follower of Barry, even voted for him in l964. Now I find myself in Krugman’s camp. Granted this is no Damascus lightning bolt, but has it taken me half a century to find political wisdom? Or is it a half century slide into foolishness?
Leaving aside reasons why I made such a autobiographical u-turn, interesting or boring as they might be, Krugman makes sense to me today. He argues that Democrats are the TRUE conservatives, being “defenders of long standing institutions of equality” which began with FDR’s use of government intervention in the l930’s to bring about such New Deal changes as social security, wage and price controls during World War II, unemployment insurance, and broad government action in all areas. The result, Krugman claims, was a leveling effect which created a broad-based middle class, one that lasted through the l960’s.
What began to change then, he thinks, is based on racial attitudes, at the heart of America ever since the Civil War. The Democrats, for all of their progressive legislation, struck a pact with the devil in their acceptance of Jim Crow racism in the South. They looked the other way, while Southerners with long memories rejected the party of Lincoln and were the Solid South Democrats for most of a century.
Republicans began to exploit this racial resentment, particularly with the civil rights movement and forced integration of schools, and turned it into a backlash against “big government” in general, imposing its will on states and individuals. What Goldwater started Ronald Reagan completed, and his ideology has been dominant in the Republican party ever since. He pushed the notion that government is not the solution, but the problem, and if it would just get out of the way our nation would be much better off. Racial resentment against Washington was channeled into anger against alleged “waste” in government, especially in welfare programs denigrated as full of “welfare queens”. Government action could always be criticized as “socialist”, holding up as examples the nations of Europe, and and fusing this fear of loss of freedom into the Cold War against Soviet Russia.
“Socialism” was, and is, always the bogeyman of any kind of national health car, first e considered as a part of social security in the l930’s, actually proposed as far back as 1946 by Harry Truman, favored by Richard Nixon 25 year later, who in retrospect was fairly moderate in his domestic policies. Krugman finds that private health care has always been inefficient with its for-profit bottom line which excluded those most in need of care as too expensive. Every western country, except the U.S., has some kind of government-subsidized health care, and even the United States has provided Medicare for the elderly. Krugman writes that direct government health care as socialized medicine is rare – what most countries have is “socialized insurance”, the distinction being that citizens are perfectly free to select their own physicians, as is the case with Medicare.
Krugman’s book was written in 2007, before Obama’s election and the enactment of a national health care plan, but at the time , he thought that an absolutely essential goal for any Democratic president would be health care legislation.
Finally, Krugman deals with the income inequality which has gotten much worse in the late 20th century and shows no signs of reversal in this century. He thinks this is more due to the demise of the unions than to technology or globalization. Unions, he thinks, kept salaries more or less equal, even with non-union workers who were forced to compete with union income. One other thing unions did was to keep a close eye on management, an oversight now mostly lacking as can be seen with astronomical CEO compensations. What happened to the unions? There were excesses of power, to be sure, but again, Reagan demonized them and followed his words with the breaking of the air controllers’ strike in the early 80’s.
Conservatives, of course, talk about “freedom” and how the federal government is usurping this fundamental right (one current example being the pro-gun lobby, fueled again by resentment of government). But for Krugman, freedom is an empty concept if the only people who are “free” to make meaningful choices are the rich. In this scenario, we are back to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century where enormous fortunes were made at the expense of the poor.
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Dec 11, 2012 David rated it 1 of 5 stars

a worst book of any kind of pushing America into more neo-liberalistic territory..Often America, like the rest of the world, has also been skillfully played by the Elites into view any matters into bi-polarity..with the clear understanding of what the world is constructed..this is a book written specifically to attack conservatism..nothing wrong with the conservatism..but putting social benefits, welfare in the front as a disguise is not neo-liberal point of view..the truth that previous readers...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Bryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The thing about Paul Krugman is that, even though some of the things he says are far from the middle of the road, he is so modest in the way he says it and lacks the arrogance you might expect from someone espousing such views that I don't even notice. He really is a good writer that way, and probably reaches a much broader audience because of it.
This isn't my favorite work of Krugman's. I didn't think anything was added to the argument. The first half of the book, which focuses on historical pe...more The thing about Paul Krugman is that, even though some of the things he says are far from the middle of the road, he is so modest in the way he says it and lacks the arrogance you might expect from someone espousing such views that I don't even notice. He really is a good writer that way, and probably reaches a much broader audience because of it.
This isn't my favorite work of Krugman's. I didn't think anything was added to the argument. The first half of the book, which focuses on historical perspective of liberal ideas, was harder to get through than I expected. That may be because I'm reading it 5 years after he wrote it, so perhaps the book felt fresher back then. On second thought, since it was written during the Bush years, and before Obamacare, it probably was a lot fresher.
Krugman spends a lot of pages on healthcare, and makes no apology for putting healthcare reform as the #1 priority for the modern progressive movement. This begins about halfway through the book, which is about when I started enjoying the book. Krugman has such a talent for explaining complex economic and current political ideas in a simplified way, and when he stays on those subjects, especially economics, he really shines. In other words, his history was not engaging, his commentary on economics and policy was very engaging, and only appeared in the last half of the book. I especially liked his commentary on racial issues in this country and the effect in politics.
Movement Conservatives? I think I've been living under a rock, because I've never heard of this term before. But perhaps it is one of Krugman's own making. But he is so modest in his writing style that I wouldn't have picked up on it. He is not one to say "Hey, I've come up with a new phrase that describes those conservatives: We should all call them..."
You could probably read the title and get the idea of the entire book. There weren't any big surprises or alarming sections--but again, that might be because I read it so long after it was meant to be read.(less)

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Jul 08, 2012 Sam Catanzaro rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There’s nothing wrong with not finishing a book that’s unenjoyable. After all, reading should be a act of leisure, and there’s nothing leisurely about slogging through a monotonous set of pages. Because I adhere to this principle, my book-completion percentage over the past six months is 20%. This afternoon, I finished a book, and was surprised. Not because I finished it, but because it was a book that didn’t initially seem enjoyable. The book was Paul Krugman’s “The Conscience of a Liberal” and...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, politics, history, favorites, read-in-2009

I've been a regular reader of his always-interesting New York Times columns for years, but ever since I studied his work on trade and urban geography in grad school (coincidentally, the work that would gain him the 2008 Economics Nobel Prize), I've been a huge admirer of his serious economics work as well. The Conscience of a Liberal is a response of sorts to Barry Goldwaters's highly influential 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative, making the case that if the United States is to remain a...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Adam Wiggins rated it 3 of 5 stars

The core value of modern liberalism is equality. Not just of opportunity, but of outcomes. By many measures, inequality has grown in the US in the past thirty years. Counteracting this trend is, according to the author, both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for the Democratic party today.

He believes the party can, should, and must begin work on a "new New Deal" which expands government's role in reducing the spread between society's richest members and its poorest, beginning wit...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Jason Yang rated it 4 of 5 stars

Krugman shares a compelling description of how the American middle class came into existence and how social and economic inequality undermines democracy.

As an economically illiterate, apolitical left-of-center moderate, I thought that this book was interesting and written in a language I can understand. I personally appreciate the quantitative reasoning that Krugman uses to delineate between different hypotheses for critical transition points/events since the New Deal. Krugman paints an elegant...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Melissa Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very well-written. I should have read it a few years ago when I was still optimistic about a progressive movement in this country.

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Oct 03, 2010 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought this would be more about Krugman's personal opinions - and it was, kind of - but it turned out to be more historical. Which is fine, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I thought based on the title. I do feel like I should try to read more conservative books because I keep reading ones that reaffirm my personal beliefs. I do try to get other perspectives, but usually they just end up confirming what I think.

Also this book was written in 2007 so there was a whole lot about how the nex...more

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Jan 30, 2010 Gary Miller rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author talks about previous elections and how they are different from today. He feels there is hope for liberals.

The author makes a claim, with what he thinks is proof, that the electorate is becoming more and more liberal. Though I wondered what kind of drugs he uses, nevertheless he did make some interesting points.

One reason why he believes this has to do with health care. He talks about the results of polling over the years. He says in 1972, 37% of the people wanted a government plan to...more

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Dec 15, 2009 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is vintage Krugman—compelling evidence, clearheaded analysis, and bold conclusions, using arguments that are hard to argue with. The underlying theme of the book is that the US is trending strongly in the direction of inequity (economically, socially, politically), which is now at levels not experienced since the early 1900s, prior to the New Deal. The reason is that, as he put it, “Yes, Virginia, there is a vast rightwing conspiracy.” He describes how radical conservatives, lead in part by...more

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May 30, 2009 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. As is the case with many political books, I could see some accusing Krugman of simply "preaching to the choir," but in reality Krugman writes with a scholarly, even tone that I could imagine convincing even some conservatives. Krugman's book is extremely interesting, not coming across as too dry, and keeps the reader's attention throughout. Perhaps the most stunning revelation is Krugman's assertion that in fact, the Democrats are the true conservative party, in that they want to preserve curren...more

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May 11, 2009 Tim Byrne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found the central thesis of the book interesting, but the case for it hardly made and hardly even argued. Granted that the book was written for a wide audience, and getting into economics would just scare off most people, but it does limit the value of the book as a polemic tool.
The thesis is plausible, and it does explain the facts: Perhaps structural changes in institutions give rise to an environment in which corporate revenues are absorbed less by labor and more by managers. It's a good st...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Prateek Jain rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics

The Conscience of a Liberal is a book by Mr.Paul Krugman which traverses through the American political history and explains why the american economy and society has the conservative and or liberal attitude it possesses as of now.

The book does a detail examination of how New Deal came into place, the social-political conditions which led to its creation, and its ramifications. The book also tries to address a burning question related to why US is the only nation in the Western Hamisphere withou...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Christoph rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This might be closer to 3.5 (7 out of 10) but I will be generous and round up for this one, since it is a pretty fair analysis of the situation up to the time this book was published. That said, it is already pretty dated and is starting to look like yet another liberal missed opportunity. When this came out in 2007, the air of hope was high, Obama was not even on his hope/change rheotric yet although this pretty much laid out what he had to do to be successful. Sadly, it does not appear Obama p...more This might be closer to 3.5 (7 out of 10) but I will be generous and round up for this one, since it is a pretty fair analysis of the situation up to the time this book was published. That said, it is already pretty dated and is starting to look like yet another liberal missed opportunity. When this came out in 2007, the air of hope was high, Obama was not even on his hope/change rheotric yet although this pretty much laid out what he had to do to be successful. Sadly, it does not appear Obama paid enough attention to this tome and as a result, we are all paying for it.

Here Krugman lays out the 20th Century as the rise and fall of liberalism; coincidentally, the prosperity of the American people similarly rose and fell in a similar fashion. We start out the century with what he calls the Long Gilded Age where economic inequality was exorbitant. At this time conservatism was the norm and political partisanship incapcitated progress; however, the progressive movement started as a response to this inequality which started a near half century of the rise of unions, social awareness, and the beginnings of the welfare state. During this time, income inequality decreased, political partisanship became more moderate from both sides of the political duality, and general prosperity reigned. The peak years of this success ranges between the 1950s to 1970s, just as the conservative movement started its tireless efforts to dismantle the progress made since the beginning of the century. A reactionary appartus of money, organization, and manufactured consensus began building to undo the work of equality. By the end of the century it was looking pretty bleak. Tax rates had regressed to levels before the 50s which allowed income inequality to rise, major attacks on the welfare state had begun to show progress as the ruthless work of conservatives continually learned from thier mistakes of messaging and dog-whistling, and the resistance to enacting universal health care coverage had managed to persist for over 50 years. In detailing this narrative, Krugman has made a reasoned, well-argued, civil call for liberals to stand up against this growing tide of anti-progressive rhetoric.

There certainly is not much revolutionary perspective here on the historical interpretation of the events that occurred, nor in the perspective of how political causes have resulted in the deletrious economic effects all the more rampant since this book was published. Probably the most articulate and unique of the arguments in this book is the role racism and class warfare plays in the outcomes if not the motivations of the conservative movement. That said, Krugman failed to see the pending economic calamity facing the country (although he did make statements alluding to a housing bubble imminently bursting) nor did he wax the conservative populist movement just a few years from forming as the Tea Party, although the negative repercussions of their policies are essentially addressed here. Of course ruptures like these are not possibly predicatable which makes them such successful ruptures to progress.

But, the main purpose of this book is to make the plea for a final push for a universal healthcare. Clearly, Krugman saw the backlash waiting to be unleashed against the failed decade of the Neo-conservatives that held power and felt a liberal wave election was imminent. Subsequently, that is exactly what happened, but again Obama made many of the same mistakes his predecessors had made for him. For instance he basically put up major parts of the Republican healthcare proposal made against Clinton in the 90s as a major component of the Affordable Care Act. He did this in a vain attempt for bipartisanship; it is a major downfall of Obama that he is so desparately wants to take us back to the bipartisanship of the height of the 20th Century that he will sell out his core principles to do it. The problem is, as Krugman states, this is not the time for bipartisanship. We need a firebrand, a liberal hothead who will stand up to the unyielding conservatives who see stuborness as a virtue rather than an obstacle to progress. They act this way because whether by a self-fulfilling prophecy or this really is the conservative mindset, all their market research tells them this is how they will continue to be elected, failed policies or not. As a result, working with the conservatives is not an option until the lines are drawn again, which were erased by an anti-american march through the political, economic, legal, and social landscape during the latter half of the 20th century.

At the end of the day, we are on the road to universal healthcare which is the major point of this book even if the key point of it, a single-payer system, was sold out to providing a benefit to monied interests by forcing insurance to the private market through the mandate (a major proposal of the Republican plan in the 90s). There is still a possiblity that mandate will be deemed unconstitutional forcing the governemnt to be the insurer of last resort and providing a backdoor to single-payer. Meanwhile, an economic rupture and conservative populist movement has forced a showdown to the long-term welfare programs of medicare/aid and social security. Destruction of these programs is not on the table, but severe attacks will occur by way of austerity unless liberals and progressives once again perform their civic duty in 2012 and go to the polls to roll back some of the inevitable mid-term losses. So the admittedly dry inspiration contained in this book, should still provide enough of a call to arms to activate the progressive base even five years on from this dated polemic. Pick up a copy and find out for yourself.(less)

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Dec 12, 2010 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, social-theory

It is interesting to read this book, which was written a couple of years before Obama was elected, now that it is a couple of years after his election. This is an important book and one I would encourage you to read.

There was a time when America was a country that was interested in equality and was not really a ‘class’ society – but more a ‘middle-class’ society. There were rich and poor people, but mostly there was a kind of extended middle. That is no longer the case. Now the US is perhaps be...more It is interesting to read this book, which was written a couple of years before Obama was elected, now that it is a couple of years after his election. This is an important book and one I would encourage you to read.

There was a time when America was a country that was interested in equality and was not really a ‘class’ society – but more a ‘middle-class’ society. There were rich and poor people, but mostly there was a kind of extended middle. That is no longer the case. Now the US is perhaps best described as a kind of caste society – it has very limited social mobility (let’s put it this way, it has arguably less social mobility than Britain) and income distribution places it on levels comparable with Latin American countries, rather than European ones. Inequality is the order of the day – but how did it get to be this way?

The answer is that ‘movement conservatives’ have bought themselves a political party (the Republican Party – which, purely for the sake of brevity, we shall hereafter refer to as The Repugs). They have been so successful in this that they have effectively made America a deeply partisan country – apparently, and for perhaps the first time in American history, no Democrat is to the right of a single Repug in either chamber of government.

But this has not been achieved by money alone. One of the great questions of our time is why do people consistently vote against their own interests. Here in Victoria we have just gone through an election where the people of Frankston have voted in a Liberal (Liberal is a confusing name – in Australia that is the right of the political spectrum, i.e. a life form that would be referred to as a conservative elsewhere in the universe). Frankston has no right voting in a Liberal – it was just lucky it wasn’t 2012 or I would have believed the world really was coming to an end.

The answer, of course, as it is with most things, is racism. Tell a white person that supporting any measure might just make a single black person better off will have them hacking off their nose as quick as you can say, ‘spite your face’. We white people are reflexively racist and it is this somewhat less than endearing trait that has helped very strange people come to power in America. Did you know, for example, that Reagan’s first speech after winning nomination as Repug Presidential candidate was the Neshoba County Fair – just a couple of miles from the town where the Good Ol’ Boys in 1964 killed three Civil Rights workers. Reagan, of course, didn’t say he didn’t like black people – that would be rude – but he did say he loved state’s rights, which everyone understood meant the same thing.

Racism is the most deeply repugnant of all human traits. After a century like the 20th one might think there would be cause for pause by politicians before letting that particular genie out of the bottle – but in America and in Australia the right wing always know it is a sure-fire winner. And so they don’t hesitate.

This is a positive book and one that offers much hope in being able to move America towards being more egalitarian, before it is too late. He makes it clear that universal health care is the last best hope for the progressive forces to shift the US towards a fairer society. He was hoping that this could be virtually cost neutral on the basis of not extending Bush’s tax cuts for the rich beyond 2010. Unfortunately, every step forward is met with two steps back.

Oh, and if you don’t think inequality is a problem – and before you tell me that because I live in a ‘socialist’ country I don’t understand ‘freedom’ perhaps you should look at http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt... or http://extremeinequality.org/ or even this http://www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/

Thanks for recommending I read this guy Richard.
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May 02, 2012 Trevor Kidd rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Conscience of a Liberal gives a political and economic history of the twentieth century, highlighting the way economic inequality has been shaped by political activism by far-right "movement conservatives," who got their start in the 1960s but didn't come to political power until the 1980s.

The Good: Krugman's book is well argued and written for a general audience. You don't have to have ever taken an economics class to understand his arguments and conclusion. Krugman goes into a lot of detail sh...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Angela rated it 2 of 5 stars

Krugman may be the prophet of thinking Democrats, but this book - I guess his manifesto? - didn't really get my blood going. Not like "What's the Matter with Kansas?", a book Krugman cites - and corrects (in his view) by incorporating the US's fraught racial history into current political lines. But even the racism thing, certainly not a thesis original to Krugman, didn't really get me going. I felt like he wasn't adding much. There are other books about these same topics that are better-written...more

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About Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, liberal columnist and author. He is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his contributions...more

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Books by Paul Krugman

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science

Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations

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