Transcript
Question: What forces shaped America? Paul Krugman: America is the great land of reinvention. I mean it’s . . . If there’s a consistent in the thing that makes it so great, it is that it was reinvented by successive generations – both from the immigrant experience, the frontier experience, the . . . Most of us are not descendants of the original colonists, but of people who came, one way or another, to make themselves a better and different life. And it’s always been innovative. And there are negatives too. One of the things that I wrote about in my book is the extent to which still America’s life is warped by the legacy of slavery, the original sin of our country. But you know when . . . All advanced countries now have a lot in common. America has its virtues, its defects. But what strikes me is how similar in the way the choices, the dilemmas, the positive things are across . . . across the advanced world. We’re not . . . we’re not . . . we’re not that exceptional.
