The Conscience of a Liberal
by Paul Krugman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paul KrugmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-12
ISBN: 0393333132
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780393333138
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of The Conscience of a Liberal
Book Review: Progressive agenda for the next decade
Summary: 4 Stars
Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal is a challenge to the modern Democrat party to reclaim the United States from the hard right. The hard right - movement conservatism, Krugman names it - is not the dominant party in U.S. politics because most people share its' views, it has achieved political supremacy because it has cloaked its anti-populist policies in the rhetoric of small government popular soundbites, targeting "values" voters. Underlying the anti-progressive policies of movement conservatism, is the issue of race.
Krugman (a teacher of economics and international affairs at Princeton University) at first provides us with a socio-economic history of the last century of the United States. He discusses The Gilded Age of America, the pre-New Deal society that had huge disparities of wealth, extremes of inequality. This was levelled out somewhat by the policies of the New Deal and its subsequent effects of improvement in living and working conditions for a great majority of the American population. This period of social and economic improvement, which lasted for decades until the mid 1970s, Krugman labels The Great Compression.
Post Nixon, whose social policies were quite moderate compared to the radicalism of the George W. Bush administration, American society regressed back towards the extremes of poverty and massive wealth of The Gilded Age, albeit temporarily halted under Clinton. Under the Bush II regime, Krugman argues that movement conservatism has sighed it's last gasp; Bush's failed attempt to privatise social security, a safety net for many millions, was a signal that the time is right in American politics for a seismic shift.
With Krugman's background in economics, this book is supported by plentiful statistical evidence. The lynch pin is that since the 1970s, there is serious doubt that despite technological improvements, numerous workplace efficiencies and the rise of Gross Domestic Product, for the majority of the American workforce, they are no better off. In the 1950s and 1960s, in a traditional nuclear family, the adult male could support a wife and kids and pay the mortgage on one income. Today, that is unrealistic. Couple that with increased job insecurity and that some 40 million Americans don't even have adequate health care insurance and today's America seems like a country that bears a striking resemblance to the age of the robber-barons.
For Krugman, universal health care insurance is the single most important issue on the table; there is both a moral and sound economic argument for it. From that, other equalising benefits would flow. As a British reader, it makes the National Health Service, with all its imperfections, a true national treasure. One would hope that The Conscience of a Liberal is on the reading list of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and their respective handlers. If it is, the forthcoming national elections in the U.S. could actually make a meaningful difference if the lessons in this book are taken to heart. Otherwise, another formal ritual in endorsing corporate America's favoured managers is to be acted out once again.
A thorough book, that takes complex ideas and makes them comprehensible without oversimplification, Paul Krugman has written a timely reminder as to which policies could make a genuine, positive difference to people's lives, policies that would improve the health of the nation and that would also go some way to restoring faith in the power of government as a force for good in this world.
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