NPR Interview with Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman has released a new book called The Conscience of a Liberal. National Public Radio did an interview with Krugman on its show All Things Considered. During this interview Krugman made the point that starting with the Ronald Reagan there has been an conscious attempt by the conservative movement to dismantle the programs of FDR that alleviated the effect of income inequality in the United States. These programs included helping unions organize, increasing the minimum wage, and social security. These programs were aided by the Johnson initiatives such as Medicare, Medicaid, and, perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Since 1980, though, all of these programs have, at one time or another, been under attack by the political right of the United States with varying degrees of success. Democrats have been on the defensive for the last generation, only occupying the White House for 8 of the last 27 years and losing control of both Houses of Congress for 12 of those years. When asked why he thought that so many Americans were willing to vote against their economic self-interest Krugman replied with one word: race.

He pointed out that other western societies have not seen the same degree of political support for politicians who want to do away with government programs to help the economic middle and working classes. He says that the difference between those societies and the U.S. is race. He points out that the base of the Republican Party in presidential politics is in the South, the 11 states that made up the Confederate States of America. They started voting Republican in 1964 when four of them voted for Goldwater. Republicans increased their vote in the South in 1968 and 1972, and then really expanded it in 1980. White southerners became Republicans after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. The Republican gains in the South did not take place because white southerners woke up one day and decided to embrace tax cuts. They took place because of race, a fact that Republicans and their media allies don't, for the most part, want to talk about.