Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal: Income Inequality Review
This paper offers a critical review of Paul Krugman's 2007 book Conscience of a Liberal, in which the Nobel Prize-winning economist argues that Republican Party policies have driven growing income inequality in the United States while Democratic policies have worked to reduce it. The review examines Krugman's central claims about the New Deal era, the dismantling of middle-class protections, health care reform, and the exploitation of racial politics by the GOP. It also assesses the book's strengths and limitations, noting that while Krugman communicates complex ideas accessibly, his economic arguments lack the analytical depth expected of a prize-winning economist, functioning more as a political manifesto than a rigorous scholarly text.
- Overview of Krugman's Central Argument: Book's scope, values, and thesis on income disparity
- Historical Framework: The New Deal and Income Disparity: New Deal era, middle-class rise, and gilded age comparisons
- The Republican Party's Role and Political Blame: GOP blamed for inequality, divisiveness, and racial politics
- Health Care, Conservatism, and the Liberal Manifesto: Health care as liberal centerpiece; conservatism's decline
- Critical Assessment of Krugman's Approach and Credibility: Book praised for clarity but faulted for lacking economic rigor
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What makes this paper effective
- The review moves logically from summary to critique, first establishing what Krugman argues before evaluating how well he supports those arguments.
- The writer identifies a key tension in the book — that Krugman's credibility rests on his economics expertise, yet the book deliberately avoids rigorous economic analysis — and uses this as the central critical lens throughout.
- The paper maintains a balanced tone, acknowledging the book's accessibility and relevance while pointing out its analytical shortcomings without becoming dismissive.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective evaluative book review writing by clearly distinguishing between content summary and critical assessment. The writer does not simply describe what Krugman says but consistently asks whether his evidence and reasoning are proportionate to his credentials and claims, a core skill in academic critical analysis.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with context about the author and book, then traces Krugman's argument chronologically through its key themes: the historical framing, partisan blame, health care, and political prescriptions. The final paragraphs shift from summary to critique, evaluating the book's rhetorical strategy and intellectual depth. This summary-then-evaluate structure is typical of strong undergraduate book reviews.
Overview of Krugman's Central Argument
Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Laureate in economics, published his book Conscience of a Liberal in 2007. The book outlines Krugman's political views, focusing in particular on the causes of America's growing income disparity. Krugman outlines the political differences he believes have driven the two main parties, including how those differences have come about and who is to blame for the current state of American politics. He does this by examining the twentieth century in the context of both income disparity and the ways in which government policy impacts that disparity. From this study, he draws the conclusion that the Democratic Party lowers income inequality while the Republican Party increases it.
In the book's opening, Krugman clearly outlines the values that underlie the arguments he later constructs. He draws on the years of his youth — a time of low income disparity — as his ideal era. With income disparity low and unions strong, the middle class of the United States rose to prominence during this period, which Krugman views as something of a golden age. His view of the years that followed, in particular the past three decades, is far less charitable. He cites the alarming growth in income disparity as evidence of decline and, examining the entire twentieth century, concludes that unlike the mid-century decades, recent years have come to resemble the early part of the century — representing a new gilded age.
From this basic point of view, Krugman expands on the political changes that have occurred. He appears to move somewhat away from his economic training here, taking the position that shifts in income disparity among Americans have tended to be more policy-driven than market-driven. This rationale is reasonable, given that domestic economic policy — or the lack thereof — does to a large extent determine the degree of government control over the economy.
Historical Framework: The New Deal and Income Disparity
The New Deal, Krugman argues, represented the end of the original gilded age. As unions became stronger, middle-class wealth improved and the standard of living to which Americans have become accustomed began to develop. Over time, however, the policies embedded in the New Deal that allowed the middle class to flourish have been systematically dismantled. Krugman takes the stance that this has occurred as the deliberate work of the Republican Party. The economic elite, he postulates, have dictated policy, resulting in tax cuts for the wealthy, the weakening of labor unions, and other measures that have caused income disparity in the United States to grow. As a result of these policies, the middle class has seen its real income stagnate while the wealth of the richest Americans has increased at near-exponential rates.
Krugman's framing of the twentieth century is fundamentally one of progress made and progress lost. The New Deal era is cast as a moment when policy successfully counteracted market forces that would otherwise concentrate wealth at the top. The dismantling of those protections, in his view, is not the inevitable result of market dynamics but a deliberate political choice — one made consistently by one party over several decades.
The Republican Party's Role and Political Blame
There is a considerable amount of blame directed toward the Republican Party throughout this book. Krugman contends, among other things, that the Republican Party's sharp shift to the right in recent decades does not reflect the views of the general public; that Republican politics are responsible for today's divisive political climate; and that the GOP has been taken over by a small group of ultra-right ideologues who have pushed inflammatory issues in order to distract from core questions of economic equality. He further argues that the civil rights movement gave the GOP the opportunity to exploit racial resentment in order to attract southern white voters who had previously supported the Democratic Party.
Krugman also offers solutions, including a strongly argued chapter on health care reform, proposals for increasing taxes on the wealthy, and a call for Democrats to abandon the politics of excessive inclusiveness and bipartisan compromise.
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