Krugman's Ball Deflates

so he takes it and goes home

Paul Krugman recently wrote his last regular column ever at the New York Times, and it’s, uh….quite something? I’m not a gastroenterologist, so I may not be qualified to think about Paul Krugman’s journalism, but let’s try.

Take this as a sign of the Times: This highly regarded, highly credentialed academic economist, who has had guaranteed weekly space in what are allegedly the most prestigious pages in American journalism for the last twenty-five years, can’t see anything clearly, has no ability of any kind to make an argument using evidence, hasn’t meaningfully noticed most events since the turn of the century, and uses his parting column to write about his own vague feelings, which come straight out of his ass. The difficulty of analyzing a Krugman column is the emptiness of the thing: writing about someone who isn’t writing about anything. “Here are my thoughts on narrative void.”

So.

Americans used to be optimistic, Krugman laments, but not anymore: “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.” See, when you don’t read the New York Times, you miss the culturally alert warning that people may be losing trust in elites. Don’t you wish you’d known?

But why? Krugman comes up with two guesses: the invasion of Iraq, and the 2008 financial crisis. He has no real thoughts about either. He just namechecks them.

Not mentioned: twenty years of failed war in Afghanistan, $36 trillion+ in federal debt, a made-in-a-lab pandemic that brought on harmful school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and a class of mask addicts who remain socially crippled, years of crushing inflation that made groceries and utility bills painful for the American middle class (which Krugman got wrong). In 2024, Paul Krugman can only make limp guesses about a couple of maybe-reasons why Americans would doubt their “elites.” It’s particularly fascinating that the economics guy on the New York Times op-ed pages doesn’t notice the explosion of federal debt. He can’t actually talk about anything; he just shrugs and mumbles, a performance that has made him culturally prominent. How bizarre.

Here’s what he thinks of Elon Musk, and please please please slow down to read this carefully, because it’s amazing:

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 under 16.

Which brings me back to my point that some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires….

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 Elon Musk, who isn’t admired at all, is angry and resentful and petty, and driven to hateful behavior because no one loves him, and his products “face disillusionment.” He’s turning to politics in a desperate struggle to stay relevant, since his businesses are so marginal.

We’ve all watched this person. We’ve all seen Elon Musk talking like a little kid about his excitement for his work. The “we’re going to Mars!” guy is…turning into a resentful hard-right loser because no one believes in his products, Paul Krugman explains, something that every other living human knows to be batshit false.

Innovative, productive, creative, joyful, politically connected, and resolutely occupying the stage at the center of the culture, the most obvious maker of the moment is bitterly denounced by one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the moment as a dour historical asterisk. I’ll listen to the much-asserted arguments that Musk doesn’t mean well, and is building dark systems of control, but that’s not what Krugman is saying, or an argument he seems to have ever heard. He doesn’t seem to hear a lot of arguments, judging by what he writes. Krugman isn’t merely wrong — he’s a human non-sequitur, a bag of noise with arms and legs. The problem isn’t his argument; it’s his attempts at basic description. Today’s seminar: lifelong celibate describes sexual intimacy.

Elon Musk:

Paul Krugman:

Read the whole thing yourself. It’s a kind of narrative damp rag, “more mush from the wimp,” explaining nothing but not really trying to. Eventually, if you develop the ability to say nothing about nothing while thinking nothing, in dull prose, you’ll become…this? One of the most important voices of the whatever.

All the most prominent mainstream figures are wandering toward the dayroom in their bathrobes, mumbling about who stole their hairbrush. That Elon Musk, he used to be big, but no one likes him now.

Back to bed, grandma, before the nurse sees you in the hallway.