His style is designed to appeal to a wide audience, and this likely accounts for the thankful absence of graphs and pie charts. The book has only a few of those attention killers. That stated, despite his background as an economist, Krugman (whose day job is as a columnist for The New York Times) spends very little ink on detailed economic theory. This, doubtlessly, is the columnist in him; for Krugman writes his book so the middlebrow reader can understand the basics of what his book is about.
Yet, although the book deals with the basics of economics in America over the last 120 years or more, Krugman takes such a large overview that instead of bogging down in niggling details, which too many books on assorted social theorizing- from economics to culturata- do, his large sweep invigorates a reader to see whole trends, not mere moments, as being important. Another positive in the book is that it sticks to the economic impact of assorted decisions, and does not stray too far afield into culture wars, even if it occasionally tackles subjects such as racism, and its role in the economics of the last few decades.
In short, Krugman discourses on how the aftermath of the Stock Market Crash of 1929- which ended what he calls the Long Gilded Age, of the 1870s thru 1920s, impacted Americans via the Great Depression, which saw the rise of Liberalism, through what he calls the Great Compression, after the Second World War, when higher tax rates and governmental policies squeezed incomes from top and bottom, creating a more egalitarian and stronger economy- and one that has yet to be equaled. Krugman posits that the post-war economic boom, and the rise of the suburban middle class (using the example of Levittown), was not a result of the free market, which he rightly acknowledges ended, for all intents and purposes, with the Great Depression, but with direct government intervention.
He then charts the rise of Movement Conservatism’s early and naked biases, how it learnt its lessons, and emerged to wage a stealth politics of class division (which they often accuse their counterparts on the Left of doing) to seize power, and begin a decades long assault on social gains instituted by the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Krugman also details how they overplayed their hand, and why he feels the 2006 election was a turning point back to more Liberal control of national politics, or, at the very least, a return to 1950s and 1960s moderation of the two major political parties, when, Krugman quotes President Eisenhower, on the radical Right Wing, who wanted to dismantle the New Deal, abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm subsidies, as their ‘number is negligible and they are stupid.’ The President was wrong on their size, and he shows how and why they let the accordion expand again, economically, undoing the Great Compression, and bringing on the income stagnation of recent decades. Krugman cleverly shows that in no other period of American history was there even an argument over whether a younger generation would do better than an older one. The very fact that there is debate is proof of the poor policies of Right Wing agenda-driven governance.
Article comments