Question: How has America changed in your lifetime?

Paul Krugman: Oh it’s become better.  I mean the . . .  Let’s be clear.  The  . . . the . . .  I worry a lot about the growing inequality.  We have become an elitist . . . we have entered a second gilded age.  And that    . . . that’s been a change for the worst.  I think about the attitudes of ordinary American people.  I think about the kind of . . .  We’re more tolerant.  We’re a more open society than we were.  There were ways in which we were cramped, distorted that are now largely memories.  Open racism, extreme sexism – those things still exist.  Behind closed doors they exist more than we’d like to admit, but not in the way they used to.  It’s . . .  I do miss . . .  I write in the book a lot that I do miss the sense of . . . of rough economic equality.  I think that is a harmful thing.  The dignity of the worker actually has diminished.  So it’s a mixed picture.  You know I . . .  But I guess I’m looking forward.  I think we have a prospect of getting much better.  And I look at the attitudes of the public, and I’m encouraged and uplifted.