The Conscience of a Liberal | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Krugman
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.96
You Save: $10.99 (42%)
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Rating:  85 reviews
Sales Rank: 1353
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0393060691
Dewey Decimal Number: 339.220973
EAN: 9780393060690
ASIN: 0393060691
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This wholly original new work by the best-selling author of The Great Unraveling challenges America to reclaim the values that made it great.
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 America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a work that weaves together a nuanced account of three generations of history with sharp political, social, and economic analysis. This book, written with Krugman's trademark ability to explain complex issues simply, will transform the debate about American social policy in much the same way as did John Kenneth Galbraith's deeply influential book, The Affluent Society.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 80 more reviews...
 ahistorical, nonsensical, pseudo-intellectual babble November 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The title of the book is oxymoronic; the same can be said of its contents (minus the oxy).
 Heart and Brains on the Sleeve November 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Economists properly equipped with a balanced combination of heart and brains did not need the Nobel Prize in order to recognize Paul Krugman's valuable contribution both to the "dismal science" and to the global public discourse (such as it is...). "The Conscience of a Liberal" is a sine-qua-non for anyone caring to analyze the current global financial (and real-economy) crisis. It isd also a great springboard for a search for the right policy mix to attain viable solutions to the huge problem we are all facing.
Essential Reading November 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Krugman isn't concerned with narrowly defined economics. This is an historical perspective that incorporates the social and political forces that shape the economy. In fact, his thesis is that the increasing inequality in the United States, a feature which is more and more exceptional to this country when compared to other advanced Western countries, is a result of the policies brought upon by the movement conservatism ideology which took over the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan.
This movement has now (the book was published in 2007) been rejected by the majority of the electorate and it is up to Barack Obama's government the task of implementing a new New Deal that would reduce inequality and deliver a better economic future to the overwhelming majority of America's population.
Given the crossroads where we are now, it is essential to understand the powerful forces that will match each other, the interest groups lying beneath each one, and to see beyond wedge issues that have divided the electorate. Krugman does it masterfully. This is the best book I have read in a long time.
Every Progresssive Should Read This Book November 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A wonderful, easy-to-read book documenting the rise of modern Conservatism that has led to our current plight as a nation culminating with a call for Universal Healthcare, especially a single-payer system.
A Way Forward November 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Krugman takes the reader on a succinct and readable journey through of US economic history beginning from about 1900 up to the present. His focus is how the average (or more precisely median) worker has fared. Krugman recounts the great economic inequality in the pre-Great Depression era and demonstrates that nearly identical levels of inequality have returned.
Krugman's primary argument is that US government policies and actions can be used to reduce economic inequality and that it did so in response to the Great Depression, through World War Two and beyond. He calls this era the Great Compression when the average CEO of a large company made about 30 times the income of an average worker rather than today's multiplier of 300. He further argues that conservative political forces used Nixon's Southern strategy to divide workers and attain power. Once there, these forces applied Friedman economics (and some made-up economics like the `supply-side' craze) to government policies, declared war on unions, and deregulated across the board. Krugman presciently argued that the Republicans' politics of racial division were nearing the end of the road as the demographics of the US changed.
Krugman expected the recent victory by a progressive Democrat in 2008. He sets forth several fairly specific policy recommendations for progressives (liberals who do things): universal health insurance, a more progressive tax structure, increase the minimum wage, and make union organizing easier. Part of his argument for giving priority to universal health insurance is that it will demonstrate that the government can indeed institute policies that make a person's life better. After several decades of anti-government rhetoric, such a demonstration is necessary.
Krugman's prescriptions are not a complete progressive agenda - he barely touches on the environment - but if President Obama and Congress institute Krugman's ideas in the economic realm we will have a fairer society where the benefits of economic activity are more equitably shared. My personal feeling is they should act aggressively and swiftly on multiple fronts before the GOP has recovered its footing and to occupy the inevitable political counterattack busy with many challenges at once.
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