Consciencebound

Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul  Krugman

I will be blogging my way through this book as I read it. This is part 1.

A friend of mine who voted for Barack Obama ( I did not) gave me this book to read that espouses the economic policies of some of the current democratic party.  I try to be open to different opinions that I do not agree with and so i am happy to read this book.  This is also an exercise for me to practice what I preach.  I push people to question their beliefs on a regular basis on this blog.  Now I get to see how honest I am in questioning a long held belief of mine in smaller government and lower taxes.  My hope is that I can take a serious look at my reasons for thinking what I do about how government should operate and have a thoughtful discussion with the person who gave me the book.  

Chapter 1

The Way We Were

The biggest thing that hits me in this first chapter is that Krugman has a few premises that are clear he will be working from as he moves on in this book:

1. Economic inequality is a moral problem.

2. It is the responsibility of government to correct this problem.

3. Republican (conservative) policy causes economic inequality.

4. Democratic policies(the New Deal) decrease economic inequality.

My initial response is that economic inequality is not a morally bad thing at all.  Read the rest of this entry »