Shrewd, witty, informed essays that are much needed in our anti-intellectual age.
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 ideas—false 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 him—and his readers—admirably.
Shrewd, witty, informed essays that are much needed in our anti-intellectual age.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00501-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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