- What do I, as a human being, hope for in my life, and for my community and for the people I know best?#
- What do people who live differently from me probably hope for in their lives, for their friends and their community?#
- Obviously, the answers are often pretty much the same, except when one group thinks life is a zero-sum game, are afraid of strangers, or believe in divine condemnation of those people over there, that sort of thing. The answers, otherwise, are pretty much the same.#
- “Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?” Paul Krugman asks this in his NY Times opinion essay. (1/27/23)#
- He wasted most of his essay complaining about the bad attitude, the rage, of rural people. I guess watching some of their communities, their neighbors, and their family members experience "economic desperation," as Krugman describes it, isn't a good enough reason, in his mind, for their mood. Even when that economic desperation is desperate enough, as he says, to lead some rural people to "political radicalization," he implies that they need to get their facts straight and stop complaining.#
- There is one paragraph in which the Nobel Laureate in Economics mentions place-based jobs programs. Can these make a difference? Krugman says, "Maybe, just maybe." Dazzling analysis, goddammit, sir, no wonder you make the big bucks. (No other forward-looking ideas are suggested.)#
- The columnist seems puzzled about how we can ever get these mysterious rural people to think straight and behave. And he seems to wonder why they think of city folks and coastal types as self-satisfied elites. They must look so strange to him when he occasionally looks out at them with binoculars from the limousine.#
- What do I, as a human being, hope for in my life, and for my community and for the people I know best?#
- What do people who live differently from me probably hope for in their lives, for their friends and their community?#
- Obviously, the answers are often pretty much the same, except when one group thinks life is a zero-sum game, are afraid of strangers, or believe in divine condemnation of those people over there, that sort of thing. The answers, otherwise, are pretty much the same.#
- “Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?” Paul Krugman asks this in his NY Times opinion essay. (1/27/23)#
- He wasted most of his essay complaining about the bad attitude, the rage, of rural people. I guess watching some of their communities, their neighbors, and their family members experience "economic desperation," as Krugman describes it, isn't a good enough reason, in his mind, for their mood. Even when that economic desperation is desperate enough, as he says, to lead some rural people to "political radicalization," he implies that they need to get their facts straight and stop complaining.#
- There is one paragraph in which the Nobel Laureate in Economics mentions place-based jobs programs. Can these make a difference? Krugman says, "Maybe, just maybe." Dazzling analysis, goddammit, sir, no wonder you make the big bucks. (No other forward-looking ideas are suggested.)#
- The columnist seems puzzled about how we can ever get these mysterious rural people to think straight and behave. And he seems to wonder why they think of city folks and coastal types as self-satisfied elites. They must look so strange to him when he occasionally looks out at them with binoculars from the limousine.#