[Pacg] Krugman in Iowa City Tonight, 7pm

[Carolina 1961]

The Englert Theatre
221 East Washington St.
Iowa City, IA 52240

Wednesday, November 14th at 7:00 PM

*Ticket Availability: *FREE ADMISSION - No Ticketing
*Seating:* General admission


DescriptionOne of America's finest economists and most influential
columnists, Paul Krugman has for years tracked and demystified the
machinations of the Bush administration and the powerful conservative
apparatus that backs it. Now in THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL [W. W. Norton &
Company; October 15, 2007; $25.95 cloth], Krugman expands the breadth and
depth of his investigation, offering a wholly original work that reaches
into the country's history to trace the rise and fall of America's middle
class. The result is a masterful work of political economy and social
analysis that promises to galvanize the ongoing debate over the future of
our society.
In a sweeping historical narrative that begins in the age of the robber
barons, Krugman describes a society and economy that looks like nothing so
much as the age we live in now—an era of immense disparities in wealth, in
which the wealthy maintained their grip on power, in an often corrupt
electoral system, not just through their overwhelming financial advantage,
but by exploiting cultural and ethnic divisions among workers. It took the
Great Depression and FDR's New Deal to break up this dynamic. This shift
would combine with the wartime economy to set the stage for the postwar boom
of the 50s and 60s, a time that while not without its flaws, Krugman argues,
achieved a kind of political and economic equilibrium that we have not seen
since.

That middle class society eventually was thrown into turmoil. The Vietnam
War and the unrest of the civil rights movement would both play a role in
the complete transformation of the politics of the day. The Democratic
coalition built during the New Deal fractured over Lyndon Johnson's decision
to support the Civil Rights Act, a divide that would lose them the South and
by extension the country. Soon the Eisenhower Republicans—who largely
accepted the welfare state and sought not wholesale change but variances in
degree—were upended by radicals whose ultimate goal was to dismantle the New
Deal. It is that revolution, the rise of movement conservatism, which
Krugman parses with unrivalled clarity.

Movement conservatives spent half a century building a constellation of
institutions—anti-Communists, states' rights advocates, religious
conservatives—into an apparatus capable of moving the entire party to the
right. Tangible success soon followed. In 1964 the anti-union Barry
Goldwater won the Republican nomination and in 1980 Ronald Reagan became the
first movement conservative president. Political success turned on the
funding spigots from major conservative donors—Scaife, Koch, Olin—an
outpouring that resulted in the conservative machine we see today: an
interlocking network of think tanks, lobbying organizations and press organs
that values loyalty to the cause above all else.

Over the past four decades, as Krugman demonstrates in this powerful
historical narrative, the machine has successfully delivered levels of
inequality that can only be compared to the Gilded Age. Gone is the middle
class so many of us consider essential not only to the health of our society
but to American democracy itself. It does not have to be this way. Drawing
on the latest scholarship as well as his own profound understanding of
economics, Krugman shows that it's eminently possible to have country with
strong unions, universal health coverage and a sizable safety net without
destroying entrepreneurship or the fabled productivity of the American
worker. In fact, when it comes to health care and welfare, Krugman makes the
obvious but often overlooked argument that they are not mere budget lines,
but moral imperatives.

Despite the often very real conspiracy that threatens the health of our
democracy, Krugman offers a plan for the future, a time to right the wrongs
and reclaim the centrist, moderate values that made this country the envy of
the world. It starts with universal health insurance and proceeds in a
litany. Close tax loopholes for the ultra rich and corporations and restore
progressivity to the tax code. Provide meaningful relief, not platitudes,
for the thousands of middle class families on the ropes. Revitalize unions.

Krugman invites us to reclaim the ideas and institutions that conservatives
have unfairly maligned and poisoned. And in that reclamation lays the
promise of a country much different from the one we know now. Different but
not unfamiliar, and a true vision of what this country needs to become in
order to thrive in the 21st century. THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL is an
unprecedented salvo in the battle to get America back.
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