One of the depressing features of contemporary America is that so many serious scholars turn from serious academic work to left-wing polemics. Among them is economist Joseph Stiglitz, whose recent book is just an extended strawman attack on skeptics of big government. Duke University professor Michael Munger writes in this AIER piece:

After achieving what he calls [the] “progressive capitalism” revolution in which the state is unfettered, Stiglitz imagines that prosperity will be restored, on a broad scale. To be clear, he himself defines “progressive capitalism” as “rejuvenated social democracy,” a breathtaking change in direction from commercial society to a system where decisions of allocation and income are made by political majorities, filtered through an unelected elite. The road to this new system has three animating factors: the refocusing on a “liberal education,” the unfettering of the power of majorities to redistribute income and property, and the abandonment of the myth of “American exceptionalism.”

As Munger demonstrates, Stiglitz completely misrepresents the positions of scholars like F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. But why deal with real arguments when you can put up strawmen to ridicule?

“For Stiglitz,” Munger writes, “there is only one, homogeneous, unwashed and uneducated ‘The Right.’ . . . It is hard to take seriously such a superficial and tendentious screed.”