Krugman Blogs

Ezra Klein fondly calls it a Krog.

Anyway, Krugman calls it Conscience of a Liberal, after his book of the same name.

In his maiden post, Krugman takes up the issue of inequality:

Most people assume that this rise in inequality was the result of impersonal forces, like technological change and globalization. But the great reduction of inequality that created middle-class America between 1935 and 1945 was driven by political change; I believe that politics has also played an important role in rising inequality since the 1970s. It’s important to know that no other advanced economy has seen a comparable surge in inequality – even the rising inequality of Thatcherite Britain was a faint echo of trends here.

On the political side, you might have expected rising inequality to produce a populist backlash. Instead, however, the era of rising inequality has also been the era of “movement conservatism,” the term both supporters and opponents use for the highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions that brought Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to power, and reached its culmination, taking control of all three branches of the federal government, under George W. Bush. (Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy.)

The charts shows current income disparity approaching pre-Depression heights with no signs of abating.

When a conservative tells you that the economy is going great and is buoying our collective boat, tell him this chart clearly shows not all of us are in that boat.



+Save/Share | |