Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future QUOTES

1 " And I’m with Alan Greenspan, who—surprisingly, given his libertarian roots—has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to “democratic society.” It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80–20 fallacy. It’s time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

2 " Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path—fascism. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

3 " bothsidesism. It’s the insistence that whatever excesses of partisanship you may see on the right have an equivalent on the left, that the way forward to solving America’s problems is for good centrists of both parties to come together and work things out. All of this is willfully naïve. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

4 " Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn’t a ticket to big income gains. But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

5 " But public opinion surveys show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the rich. One recent poll even found that 45 percent of self-identified Republicans support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion of a top rate of 70 percent. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

6 " There are, of course, leftist radicals in America, but they don’t control the Democratic Party; rightist radicals basically are the Republican Party. There are some politicians one might describe as centrists, in the sense that their policy views broadly match public opinion—although public opinion is actually much further to the left on economic issues than is widely acknowledged. In any case, however, at this point virtually every politician one might call a centrist is a Democrat; Republican centrists have been driven out of the G.O.P. And "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

7 " I don’t mean that conservatism in general is dying. But what I and others mean by “movement conservatism,” a term I think I learned from the historian Rick Perlstein, is something more specific: an interlocking set of institutions and alliances that won elections by stoking cultural and racial anxiety but used these victories mainly to push an elitist economic agenda, meanwhile providing a support network for political and ideological loyalists. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

8 " being fair with readers means explaining why they’re dishonest. For the most part, that means talking about the nature of modern U.S. conservatism, about the interlocking network of media organizations and think tanks that serves the interests of right-wing billionaires, and has effectively taken over the G.O.P. This network—“movement conservatism”—is what keeps zombie ideas, like belief in the magic of tax cuts, alive. If you’re having a real, good-faith debate, impugning the other side’s motives is a bad thing. If you’re debating bad-faith opponents, acknowledging their motives is just a matter of being honest about what’s going on. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

9 " So what does the Green New Deal mean? It’s not entirely clear, which is what makes it a good slogan: it could mean a number of good things. But the main thrust, as I understand it, is that we should make a big move to tackle climate change, and that this move should accentuate the positive, not the negative. In particular, it should emphasize investments and subsidies, not carbon taxes. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

10 " Look, we’ve seen this over and over again—three times since 1980. Republicans rail against budget deficits when they’re out of power, then drop all their concerns and send the deficit soaring once they are in a position to cut taxes. Then when it’s the Democrats’ turn, they’re expected to clean up the Republicans’ red ink rather than address their own priorities. Enough already. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

11 " Krugman calculation” that 70 percent of the rise in average family income has gone to the top 1 percent of families. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

12 " It’s a prime example of a zombie idea—an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

13 " Think about it. How could white nationalism not be on the rise, when movement conservatism has depended on white resentment to win elections despite following policies that benefit a wealthy elite at the expense of most Americans? How could the paranoid mind-set of Trump followers not emerge from a political movement that sees everything that doesn’t confirm its preconceptions—from the reality of climate change to low inflation—as the product of vast conspiracies? And although people tend to forget it, the corruption and cronyism of the Trump administration were prefigured in the Bush years. In many ways, what Trump has done to America since 2016 is similar to what the Bush team did to Iraq in the disastrous first year of occupation. And "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

14 " When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing, their fantasizing isn’t a delusion, it’s a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

15 " The doctrine that low taxes on the wealthy are the secret of prosperity has been tested again and again since the 1980s. It was tested in 1993, when Bill Clinton raised taxes, and conservatives predicted disaster; instead, he presided over a huge economic expansion. It was tested under George W. Bush, who cut taxes again, and whose supporters promised a boom; what he actually got was lackluster growth followed by financial collapse. It was tested in 2013, when Barack Obama allowed some of the Bush tax cuts to expire, while raising some other taxes to pay for Obamacare; the economy just kept chugging along. It was, finally, tested by Donald Trump, who passed a big tax cut in 2017 amid promises of another economic miracle; even as late as early 2019, the Trump tax cut was looking like a big fizzle. There were also tests at the state level. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

16 " Most obviously, the federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by a third over the past half century, even as worker productivity has risen 150 percent. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

17 " All it takes are a few billionaires willing to spend a small fraction of their wealth supporting politicians, think tanks—or actually “think” tanks—and partisan media willing to spread the tax-cut virus. That’s easily enough to keep the zombies lurching along. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

18 " And the decline of unions has made a huge difference. Consider the case of trucking, which used to be a good job but now pays a third less than it did in the 1970s, with terrible working conditions. What made the difference? De-unionization was a big part of the story. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

19 " Which brings us back to the nostalgia thing. There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet, and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been? "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

20 " In both countries the ruling parties—Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary—have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption, and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future. "

― Paul Krugman , Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future