Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was a bit sceptic about this book. I have read Krugman’s NYTimes blog posts and although I like them, I didn’t expect they would carry a book. But this is well organised and has a lot of additional essays which makes it actually very interesting book to read. Although most of the book is about US economy and welfare including health care, it does go beyond US and covers the economic issues EU has as well.
I would have given actually 5 starts, but there’s some mistakes. This is understandable, since it is mostly collection of blog posts author published in NYTimes after all. But hey, when Krugman covers EU problems and euro as it’s currency, it is true, that Island has it’s own currency, but it’s not EU country and it’s economical issues were way different than anywhere in EU countries. Also, as a Finn, ahem, Ericsson is Swedish company, we here in Finland have Nokia.
Although like said, the focus is mostly focus US. I have lived a decade in Canada and rest of my life in Finland and still found book highly interesting and it’s findings fitting very well for European economic policies as well. Krugman seems to have very European way of thinking about welfare and health care. He calls it social democratic instead of socialism. This is one thing where he goes a bit off. Rightist parties in Europe mostly do support social security and health care; it’s not only social democrats.
