Paul Krugman reflects on what’s changed in his 25 years as a New York Times columnist.
By Paul Krugman / The New York Times December 11, 2024
This is my final column for The New York Times, where I began publishing my opinions in January 2000. I’m retiring from the Times, not the world, so I’ll still be expressing my views in other places. But this does seem like a good occasion to reflect on what has changed over these past 25 years.
What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.
It’s hard to convey just how good most Americans were feeling in 1999 and early 2000. Polls showed a level of satisfaction with the direction of the country that looks surreal by today’s standards. My sense of what happened in the 2000 election was that many Americans took peace and prosperity for granted, so they voted for the guy who seemed as if he’d be more fun to hang out with.
In Europe, too, things seemed to be going well. In particular, the introduction of the euro in 1999 was widely hailed as a step toward closer political as well as economic integration; toward a United States of Europe, if you like. Some of us ugly Americans had misgivings, but initially they weren’t widely shared.
Of course, it wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. There was, for example, already a fair bit of proto-QAnon-type conspiracy theorizing and even instances of domestic terrorism in America during the Clinton years. There were financial crises in Asia, which some of us saw as a potential harbinger of things to come; I published a 1999 book titled “The Return of Depression Economics,” arguing that similar things could happen here; I put out a revised edition a decade later, when they did.
Still, people were feeling pretty good about the future when I began writing for this paper.
Why did this optimism curdle? As I see it, we’ve had a collapse of trust in elites: The public no longer has faith that the people running things know what they’re doing, or that we can assume that they’re being honest.
It was not always thus. In 2002 and 2003, those of us who argued that the case for invading Iraq was fundamentally fraudulent received a lot of pushback from people refusing to believe that an American president would do such a thing. Who would say that now?
In a different way, the financial crisis of 2008 undermined any faith the public had that governments knew how to manage economies. The euro as a currency survived the European crisis that peaked in 2012, which sent unemployment in some countries to Great Depression levels, but trust in Eurocrats — and belief in a bright European future — didn’t.
It’s not just governments that have lost the public’s trust. It’s astonishing to look back and see how much more favorably banks were viewed before the financial crisis.
And it wasn’t that long ago that technology billionaires were widely admired across the political spectrum, some achieving folk-hero status. But now they and some of their products face disillusionment and worse; Australia has even banned social media use by children younger than 16.
Which brings me back to my point that some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires.
We’ve seen this before. After the 2008 financial crisis, which was widely (and correctly) attributed in part to financial wheeling and dealing, you might have expected the erstwhile Masters of the Universe to show a bit of contrition, maybe even gratitude at having been bailed out. What we got instead was “Obama rage,” fury at the 44th president for even suggesting that Wall Street might have been partly to blame for the disaster.
These days, there has been a lot of discussion of the hard right turn of some tech billionaires, from Elon Musk on down. I’d argue that we shouldn’t overthink it, and we especially shouldn’t try to say that this is somehow the fault of politically correct liberals. Basically, it comes down to the pettiness of plutocrats who used to bask in public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can’t buy you love.
So, is there a way out of the grim place we’re in? What I believe is that although 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 may never recover the kind of faith in our leaders — belief that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they’re doing — that we used to have. Nor should we. But if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.
We're wrapping up 25 years of serialization. Reveal your farewell column on the 9th. "Past optimism turns into anger Public Lose Faith in Elite" deplorable "Bad people have their limits to power". I don't lose my optimism about a better world.
Professor Paul Krugman's last column on the 9th, announcing that he will end the series of his New York Times column. [Capturing NYT homepage]
"If we fight against the 'kakistocracy' that is still appearing at this moment, we will eventually be able to return to a better world."
Paul Krugman (71), a professor at the City University of New York who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, retired from his position as a columnist for the New York Times (NYT) on the 10th. Since 2000, Professor Krugman has published a column in the NYT on all-round areas such as economy, politics, and culture for 25 years.
"It seems to be a good opportunity to look back on what has changed (in the world, including the United States) over the past 25 years," he wrote at the beginning of a farewell column titled "Finding Hope in an Age of Resistance."
"At the time of 25 years ago when the column began, Americans took peace and prosperity for granted, and political and economic integration also took place in Europe," he said. However, it surprises me how optimistic we and many in the Western world were and how much that optimism was replaced by anger and anger, he said. "Now optimism is turning into anger."
"(Those who get angry) are not only working classes who feel betrayed by the elite, but also billionaires who are very likely to exert great influence on the next Donald Trump administration," he wrote. "The reason why optimism has been dampened is that the public no longer has faith in the people who run the state administration, they don't think they're honest, and the public's trust in the "elites" (of American society) has collapsed," he said.
However, he also did not lose his stances. "It is questionable whether there is any way out of the grim situation we are in, but if we fight against the Kakistocracy (a system ruled by the lowest), which is still appearing at this moment, we will eventually be able to return to a better world," he predicted.
Professor Paul Krugman. [Yonhap News]
Meanwhile, Professor Krugman predicted the Asian financial crisis at the time, including Korea's 1997 foreign exchange crisis. "The development of emerging Asian countries, including South Korea, is not due to high productivity, but because it is the result of too much input of production factors such as capital and manpower, a crisis will come soon," he wrote in a 1994 article. In 2005, he mentioned that a large portion of foreign funds that made up for the current deficit in the United States were forming a U.S. real estate price bubble, and that a major financial crisis could occur between 2006 and 2010. He received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to the establishment of economic theories that provide answers to questions about free trade and globalization.
Born to a Jewish family in New York State in 1953, Professor Krugman received a master's degree in economics from Yale University and then received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served on the White House Economic Advisory Committee during the Ronald Reagan administration for a year from 1982.
Since then, he has been a professor at Yale University, MIT, and Stanford University, and since 2000, he has moved to Princeton University's Department of Economics, and immediately worked as a NYT columnist.
Announcing his retirement, the New York Times said, "It was a great inspiration to see his deep interest in journalism and his strong work ethic." Professor Krugman told the NYT that this is the last column, but he will continue to give his opinion elsewhere.
Professor Krugman, a pro-(親) Democrat, has also strongly criticized Republican candidate Donald Trump during the presidential election. He did not name a specific person on the day, but wrote, "I believe anger can allow 'bad people' to take power, but it cannot keep them in that position." For this reason, some are regarded as partisan scholars.
![Professor Paul Krugman. [Yonhap News]](https://wimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202412/11/news-p.v1.20241211.1a07d2ac88cb492bbc90ea77dfec3fcc_P1.jpg)
