Arguing with zombies : economics, politics, and the fight for a better future

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Krugman, Paul R.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xvi, 444 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

General Note:

Includes index.

Summary:

"An accessible, compelling introduction to today's major policy issues from columnist, best-selling author, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. There is no better guide than Paul Krugman to basic economics, the ideas that animate much of our public policy. Likewise, there is no better foe of zombie economics, the misunderstandings that just won't die. This delightful new book finds Krugman at his best, turning readers into intelligent consumers of the daily news with quick, vivid sketches of the key concepts behind taxes, health care, international trade, and more. Arguing with Zombies will put Krugman at the front of the debate in the 2020 election year. Building on and expanding his New York Times columns and other writings, it contains short, accessible chapters on topics including the fight for national health care in the United States, the housing bubble and financial meltdown of 2007- 2008, the European Union and Brexit, the attack on Social Security, and the fraudulent argument- the ultimate zombie- that tax cuts for the rich will benefit all"--

Subject Term:

Economics

Common fallacies

Publication Info:

New York, N.Y. : W. W. Norton & Company, [2020]

Subject:

Economics

Common fallacies

United States -- Economic conditions -- 21st century

Economic theory

Political economy

Blunders

Errors, Popular

Fallacies, Common

Information, Misattributed

Misattributed information

Misconceptions, Popular

Misinformation (Common fallacies)

Mistakes, Popular

Popular errors

Popular misconceptions

SAILS ISBN:

9781324005018

Available:

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Summary

There is no better guide than Paul Krugman to basic economics, the ideas that animate much of our public policy. Likewise, there is no stronger foe of zombie economics, the misunderstandings that just won't die.

In Arguing with Zombies, Krugman tackles many of these misunderstandings, taking stock of where the United States has come from and where it's headed in a series of concise, digestible chapters. Drawn mainly from his popular New York Times column, they cover a wide range of issues, organized thematically and framed in the context of a wider debate. Explaining the complexities of health care, housing bubbles, tax reform, Social Security, and so much more with unrivaled clarity and precision, Arguing with Zombies is Krugman at the height of his powers.

Arguing with Zombies puts Krugman at the front of the debate in the 2020 election year and is an indispensable guide to two decades' worth of political and economic discourse in the United States and around the globe. With quick, vivid sketches, Krugman turns his readers into intelligent consumers of the daily news and hands them the keys to unlock the concepts behind the greatest economic policy issues of our time. In doing so, he delivers an instant classic that can serve as a reference point for this and future generations.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (Jan.)

Kirkus Review

Penetrating analyses of urgent, controversial problems.Krugman (Economics/City Univ. of New York; End This Depression Now!, 2012, etc.), winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, gathers more than 90 articles, most from his New York Times columns, lucidly explaining often confounding economic issues. Prefacing each of 18 sections with a cogent overview, the author takes on topics that include social security, health care, the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath (essays that comprise more than a third of the book), the myths of austerity, Europe's economic problems, tax cuts, trade wars, inequality, climate change, and, not least, the damage being inflicted by Donald Trump and his enablers. Many of the pieces are hard-hitting arguments against zombie ideas, "an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die." Zombie ideas, Krugman asserts, are put forth by "influential people" who "move in circles in which repeating" such ideas "is a badge of seriousness, an assertion of tribal identity." Alternatively, ideas such as climate change denial, which persist despite prolific evidence, are "better described as cockroach ideasfalse claims you may think you've gotten rid of, but keep coming back." There are plenty of villains in Krugman's crosshairs: the "anti-labor" extremist Brett Kavanaugh, "flimflam man" Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Bernie Madoff, George W. Bush and his "fraudulent march to war," and Ronald Reagan, to name a few. Many essays focus on the current president. "It's not just that Trump has assembled an administration of the worst and dimmest," writes the author. "The truth is that the modern GOP doesn't want to hear from serious economists, whatever their politics. It prefers charlatans and cranks, who are its kind of people." Krugman is a serious economist who detailed his intellectual focus and style in a 1993 essay, "How I Work." He cites four rules that guide his research: listen to intelligent views; question the question; "dare to be silly"; and "simplify, simplify." All serve himand his readersadmirably.Shrewd, witty, informed essays that are much needed in our anti-intellectual age. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

In this collection, Nobel Prize-winning economist Krugman presents short essays, mostly written since 2003 as columns for The New York Times, as well as several longer pieces. He groups the writings in topical sections covering Social Security, tax reform, health care, trade, inequality, politics, the 2008 financial crisis, and other pertinent subjects. Krugman does not shy away from controversy, and considers zombies to be people who cannot accept that their ideas are factually wrong. In one essay on Social Security, he calls out the Bush Administration for lying about the benefits of privatization. He describes Representative Paul Ryan as the flimflam man, the Trump tax cut as a scam, and Fox News as a Republican propaganda outlet. Though the older essays come across as somewhat dated, they recount the debates of the time, and Krugman updates them with more recent ones along with unifying introductions to each section. His essays before 2004 are included in the 2003 collection The Great Unraveling. VERDICT While Krugman's rousing, jargon-free writings will please progressive readers, they will be disconcerting to many conservative ones. An informative and controversial study combining business and political science.--Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction: The Good Fight	p. 1
1 Saving Social Security
Essay: After the Khaki Election	p. 13
Social Security Scares	p. 16
Inventing a Crisis	p. 19
Buying into Failure	p. 22
Social Security Lessons	p. 25
Privatization Memories	p. 28
Where Government Excels	p. 30
2 The Road To Obamacare
Essay: Developing a Positive Agenda	p. 35
Ailing Health Care	p. 38
Health Care Confidential	p. 41
Health Care Terror	p. 44
The Waiting Game	p. 47
Health Care Hopes	p. 50
Fear Strikes Out	p. 53
Obamacare Fails to Fail	p. 56
Imaginary Health Care Horrors	p. 59
3 The Attack On Obamacare
Essay: The Cruelty Caucus	p. 65
Three Legs Good, No Legs Bad	p. 67
Obamacare's Very Stable Genius	p. 70
Get Sick, Go Bankrupt, and Die	p. 73
How Democrats Can Deliver on Health Care	p. 76
4 Bubble And Bust
Essay: The Sum of All Fears	p. 81
Running Out of Bubbles	p. 83
That Hissing Sound	p. 86
Innovating Our Way to Financial Crisis	p. 89
The Madoff Economy	p. 92
The Ignoramus Strategy	p. 95
Nobody Understands Debt	p. 97
5 Crisis Management
Essay: The Triumph of Macroeconomics	p. 103
Depression Economics Returns	p. 106
IS-LMentary	p. 109
Stimulus Arithmetic (Wonkish but Important)	p. 113
The Obama Gap	p. 115
The Stimulus Tragedy	p. 118
6 The Crisis In Economics
Essay: The Cost of Bad Ideas	p. 123
The Mythical Seventies	p. 126
That Eighties Show	p. 128
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?	p. 130
Bad Faith, Pathos, and G.O.P. Economics	p. 149
What's Wrong with Functional Finance? (Wonkish)	p. 152
7 Austerity
Essay: Very Serious People	p. 157
Myths of Austerity	p. 160
The Excel Depression	p. 163
Jobs and Skills and Zombies	p. 166
Structural Humbug	p. 169
8 The Euro
Essay: A Bridge Too Far	p. 175
The Spanish Prisoner	p. 178
Crash of the Bumblebee	p. 181
Europe's Impossible Dream	p. 184
What's the Matter with Europe?	p. 187
9 Fiscal Phonies
Essay: The Gullibility of the Deficit Scolds	p. 193
The Flimflam Mon	p. 195
The Hijacked Commission	p. 198
What's in the Ryan Plan?	p. 201
Melting Snowballs and the Winter of Debt	p. 203
Democrats, Debt, and Double Standards	p. 207
On Paying for a Progressive Agenda	p. 210
10 Tax Cuts
Essay: The Ultimate Zombie	p. 215
The Twinkie Manifesto	p. 218
The Biggest Tax Scam in History	p. 221
The Trump Tax Scam, Phase 2	p. 224
Why Was Trump's Tax Cut a Fizzle?	p. 227
The Trump Tax Cut: Even Worse Than You've Heard	p. 230
The Economics of Soaking the Rich	p. 234
Elizabeth Warren Does Teddy Roosevelt	p. 238
11 Trade Wars
Essay: Globaloney and the Backlash	p. 243
Oh, What a Trumpy Trade War!	p. 246
A Trade War Primer	p. 249
Making Tariffs Corrupt Again	p. 254
12 Inequality
Essay: The Skewing of America	p. 259
The Rich, the Right, and the Facts	p. 261
Graduates versus Oligarchs	p. 282
Money and Morals	p. 285
Don't Blame Robots for Low Wages	p. 288
What's the Matter with Trumpland?	p. 291
13 Conservatives
Essay: Movement Conservatism	p. 297
Same Old Party	p. 299
Eric Cantor and the Death of a Movement	p. 302
The Great Center-Right Delusion	p. 305
The Empty Quarters of U.S. Politics	p. 308
14 EEK! Socialism!
Essay: Red-Baiting in the 27st Century	p. 313
Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom	p. 315
Something Not Rotten in Denmark	p. 319
Trump versus the Socialist Menace	p. 322
15 Climate
Essay: The Most Important Thing	p. 327
Donald and the Deadly Deniers	p. 329
The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial	p. 332
Climate Denial Was the Crucible for Trumpism	p. 335
Hope for a Green New Year	p. 338
16 Trump
Essay: Why Not the Worst?	p. 343
The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics	p. 345
Trump and the Aristocracy of Fraud	p. 348
Stop Calling Trump a Populist	p. 351
Partisanship, Parasites, and Polarization	p. 354
Why It Can Happen Here	p. 358
Who's Afraid of Nancy Pelosi?	p. 361
Truth and Virtue in the Age of Trump	p. 364
Conservatism's Monstrous Endgame	p. 367
Manhood, Moola, McConnell, and Trumpism	p. 370
17 On The Media
Essay: Beyond Fake News	p. 375
Bait-and-Switch	p. 377
Triumph of the Trivial	p. 380
Is There Any Point to Economic Analysis?	p. 383
The Year of Living Stupidly	p. 385
Hillary Clinton Gets Gored	p. 387
18 Economic Thoughts
Essay: The Dismal Science	p. 393
How I Work	p. 395
The Instability of Moderation	p. 407
Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I'm a Crypto Skeptic	p. 411
Credits	p. 415
Index	p. 417

Available:

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents