Saturday January 28, 2023; 7:34 AM EST
- “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.#