Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations - Hardcover

Krugman, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393036022 ISBN 13: 9780393036022

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1994

Synopsis

The past twenty years have been an era of economic disappointment in the United States. They have also been a time of intense economic debate, as rival ideologies contend for policy influence. Above all, they have been the age of the policy entrepreneur - the economic snake-oil salesman, right or left, who offers easy answers to hard problems.
It started with the conservative economists - Milton Friedman at their head - who made powerful arguments against activist government that had liberals on the defensive for many years. Yet when Ronald Reagan brought conservatism to power, it was in the name not of serious thinkers but of the supply-siders, whose ideas were cartoon-like in their simplicity. And when the dust settled, it was clear that the supply-side treatment not only had cured nothing, but had left behind a $3 trillion bill.
Meanwhile, the intellectual pendulum had swung. In the 1980s, even while conservatives ruled in Washington, economic ideas that justified government activism were experiencing a strong revival. But the liberals, it turns out, have their own supply-siders: the strategic traders, whose simplistic vision of a U.S. economy locked in win-lose competition with other countries proved far more appealing to politicians than less-dramatic truth. And it seems all too likely that the new patent medicine will do as much harm as the previous one.
In this provocative book, Paul Krugman traces the swing of the ideological pendulum, from left to right and back again, and the strange things that happen to economic ideas on their way to power.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a best-selling author, columnist, and blogger for the New York Times, and is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Economists willing or able to appraise their dismal science and its arguable utility with something other than reverential solemnity are a decidedly rare breed. On the evidence of the ingratiatingly witty text at hand, however, MIT Professor Krugman (The Age of Diminished Experience, not reviewed) can and does subject a dubious discipline to the sort of analysis that could make it accessible as well as useful to the voting public. For all his wry commentary, the author is informed by a serious purpose: he wants not only to determine why the domestic economy is no longer growing at the pre-1973 rates that made America the envy of the Global Village, but also to uncover the reasons for decelerating gains in real income, an alarming spread in poverty, and related obstacles along the rocky road to perdurable prosperity. Toward these ends, he first warns that genus economicus encompasses two distinct species: academics (who pursue typically arcane research projects that, however slowly, can expand mankind's knowledge, if not immediate understanding) and policy entrepreneurs (high-profile go-getters willing to swap the approval of professional peers for acceptance by pols eager for simple, sound-bite solutions to the frequently intractable problems affecting their varied constituencies). In this cautionary context, Krugman surveys cyclical swings in ideology over the past couple of decades, starting with the successful challenge mounted by the right against Keynesian precepts, high taxation, and the welfare state. Focusing, inter alia, on the persistent expansion of federal budget deficits, he next evaluates the checkered record compiled by conservatives in power. Covered as well is the subsequent discrediting of supply- siders, the concurrent emergence of their liberal counterparts (so- called strategic traders), and the renaissance of intervention theory. At the end of the day, the author proves himself an equal- opportunity critic who remains ready to be convinced that even one- note advocates might have something to contribute. An uncommonly sensible audit of socioeconomic fads, fallacies, and fashion. (Charts and tabular material--not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0393036022
• ISBN 13: 9780393036022
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 303