Arguing with Zombies

October 14, 2019
Nobel Prize–winning economist and liberal pundit Krugman (End This Depression Now!) attacks conservatives’ policies—and morals—in these smart, tough essays. Selecting from his New York Times column and other writings, Krugman covers 15 years of “zombie ideas” that “keep shambling along, eating people’s brains” because they serve the interests of the rich. These include George W. Bush’s “snake-oil” scheme to privatize Social Security, Republican claims that Obamacare isn’t working, and conservative dogma that cutting taxes on the wealthy helps the economy. Krugman occasionally resorts to charts and wonkery to refute such pretenses, but mainly exercises his great talent for translating economics into plain English: “My spending is your income and your spending is my income,” he writes in a critique of recessionary budget cuts. “If we both slash spending, both of our incomes fall.” Krugman’s biting prose impugns character as well as doctrine—the persistence of climate change denial, he asserts, means “Republicans don’t just have bad ideas; at this point, they are, necessarily, bad people”—and sometimes lapses into derangement syndrome, as when he characterizes the GOP as “an authoritarian regime in waiting.” Progressive partisans will cheer Krugman’s plainspoken, bare-knuckled, and persuasive ripostes to conservative orthodoxy.