Krugman’s Story

If you like to read Krugman as much as I do, you might want to check out this mini-bio at New York Magazine.

What’s Left of the Left: Paul Krugman’s lonely crusade.

”For the first two years of the Obama administration, Krugman has been building, in his columns and on his blog, not just a critique of this presidency but something grander and more expansively detailed, something closer to an alternate architecture for what Obamaism might be. The project has remade Krugman’s public image, as if he had spent years becoming a chemically isolate form of himself—first a moderate, then an anti-Bush partisan, and now the leading exponent of a kind of liberal purism against which the compromises of the White House might be judged.“

This section really resonated with me. When I was still working, I thought of myself as a political moderate. I was a hesitant union member, much more interested in the protection to speak out offered by the union than the labor/management negotiations. But by the time George W. Bush came to office, I had come to understand that political forces had declared war on me and my kind. They weren’t interested in getting along and compromise. They were interested in winning -- and crushing the opposition while they were at it. That opposition included me. Marion Blakey’s imposition of a contract on controllers -- on Labor Day of all days -- erased all doubts in my mind.

Oh well. Enough about me. There are a couple of other quotes below that I liked for diverse reasons. I found it to be a good -- if lengthy -- article. See if anything strikes a chord with you.

”Since World War II, Bartels found, wealthy families in the 95th percentile in income had seen identical income growth under both parties. But for families in the 20th percentile, the difference was astonishing: Under Democratic presidents, their income grew at six times the rate it did under Republican ones.”

”What Krugman took from Argentina—and what he thinks even liberals in Washington missed—was “a certain level of understanding,” he says, “that important people have no idea what they’re doing.””

Don Brown
April 28, 2011