Dem
47
GOP
53
Paul Krugman is professor emeritus of economics at Princeton, author of 27 books and 200+ scholarly articles, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and a contributor to The New York Times for a quarter of a century. Is he America's most famous living economist? Is he America's most famous living newspaper columnist? There's a pretty good case to be made that the answer to both questions is "yes."
As of Monday, however, his Times career is over. The end was rather sudden, and involved relatively little fanfare. The newspaper posted a brief press release to its corporate website, Krugman penned a farewell column, and that was pretty much it. This set of circumstances, along with the fact that Krugman says he's in good health and that he expects to continue writing elsewhere, naturally has people speculating that the separation was not amicable. But that's only speculation, as neither the Times nor Krugman is talking.
For the subject of his last Times column, Krugman decided to compare the hope that permeated the land when he started writing to the anger and resentment that is predominant today. His view is that the events of the last two decades—in particular, the lies that led to war in Iraq and the shady dealing that led to the financial meltdown in 2008—have caused people to become resentful of elites and "the system," and to follow anyone who says they will punish those elites and they will change the system (no matter how implausible those promises are). Krugman also argues that another dynamic going on is that elites are angry that they are now bad guys, and so many of them, like Elon Musk, are lashing out.
Krugman concludes that, as unpleasant as things might seem at the moment, he thinks there is reason for hope:
So is there a way out of the grim place we're in? What I believe is that while resentment can put bad people in power, in the long run it can't keep them there. At some point the public will realize that most politicians railing against elites actually are elites in every sense that matters and start to hold them accountable for their failure to deliver on their promises. And at that point the public may be willing to listen to people who don't try to argue from authority, don't make false promises, but do try to tell the truth as best they can.
We are on board with this sentiment; we've written numerous times that populist demagoguery is a short-term play, and is difficult to sustain long-term.
In any case, we did not always agree with Krugman, but we know what a highly successful career looks like. Congratulations to him on his quarter-century at the Times and good luck to him in terms of whatever comes next. (Z)