In his 1963 Pulitzer Prize (his second) winning book "Anti-Intellectualism in America," historian & the De Witt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia, Richard Hofstadter traced American anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism (at the root of the right-wing's vision of an unregulated laissez-faire "free" market & the driver of the market's one value - that utilitarianism is only achieved by letting the market set the price on everything & only those willing & ABLE to meet the merchant's price have access to his goods & services) to European cultural heritage, particularly evangelical Protestant heritage.
It has also been noticed that our periodic bouts of anti-intellectualism coincide with the ascendancy of the business community in American society. One scholar opined that Anti-Intellectualism is the Anti-Semitism of business.
If you want to understand the ongoing conspiracy mentality of our far right, read Hofstadter's 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," where he analyses the fact that there as always been a conspiracy mentality on the right that "others" are infiltrating gov't, the media, & education, trying to destroy "their" America. Over the generations only the conspirators have changed, including Freemasons, Illuminati, The Crowned Heads of Europe, the Irish, the Germans, International Bankers (Jews), the "Pope of Rome," Jesuit infiltrators, Mormons, the labor movement, Communism, Liberalism, Islamic jihad, immigrants & now the "Deep State."
28
From the tea party to the know nothing, I think the rise of KKK is just around the corner.
11
Nothing new under the "beautiful spacious skies, over amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, nor above the fruited plain!" *
• ...you’re suggesting that said person is willfully ignorant, someone who rejects facts that might conflict with his or her prejudices.
“The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.”
~ ALEISTER CROWLEY
• The range of issues on which conservatives insist that the facts have a well-known liberal bias just keeps widening.
“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
~ STEPHEN COLBERT
• So will our modern know-nothings prevail? I have no idea. What’s clear, however, is that if they do, they won’t make America great again — they’ll kill the very things that made it great.
“America..., just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” ~ HUNTER S. THOMPSON
* Borrowed and adapted from 'America the Beautiful' – fake news – words by Katharine Lee Bates, melody by Samuel Ward
9
Difference between legal immigrants and illegal aliens?
1
If we’re to believe what we read in the newspaper, blue-state Democrats are now keen to elect Congressional representatives who promise to cut their taxes and respect states’ rights.
2
The dumbing down of America began with the Reagan era. We had a brief respite by electing Obama, an intellectual, to high office. By pro-white, like anti-Semitism, also springs eternal, so he was doomed. Though I thank God daily that he was there to guide the country out of the worst recession in my lifetime.
However, Dr. Krugman, could you (as well as all the other intelligent op ed writers at the Times) please quit using Trump's degrading turn of phrase, watering it down to just so much garbage? It tends to lose its punch when everybody is saying it and we should remain outraged that a President of this country has such a potty mouth.
7
For decades, the Republican party has recruited and pandered to white bigots; starting with Nixon's Southern Strategy, through Reagan's Welfare Queens and GHW Bush's Willie Horton ads.
Then, for 8 years, "right" wing talk radio bombarded these bigots with the story that knee-grows and immigrants were taking over the country, intent on tamping down whites to 2nd class status. That there was a black man in the White House was used as Exhibit #1 for this propaganda.
By 2016, the white bigots were looking for someone, like Hitler, who was anti-non-white, would seal off the border to immigrants and certain religious groups, then systematically evict as many non-whites as possible. Along came Donald Trump, sayiong what they were all thinking; and they ate it up, hook, line & sinker.
So really, Trump is doing exactly what he promised to do; and his base loves him for it. Too bad the borders weren't sealed when THEIR relatives arrived at Ellis Island!
16
In the first half of the last century almost all important scientific discoveries were published in German. The American Oppenheimer went to Göttingen for his PhD, and the Hungarian Teller, and the Italian Fermi worked there as post-docs. As a matter of fact, all the leading physicists of the Manhattan project knew each other from their time in Germany.
They were all driven out by the Nazis, who scandalized by the fact that so many leading physicists were Jewish, decided invented "Aryan Physics", which denounced the work of the likes of Einstein and Max Born. Naturally this was all reversed after the war but with the exception of the Max Planck Institute German academia never recovered from the blow the Nazis dealt them.
The ideology of creationists and climate deniers in the GOP may be not quite as vile, but it could have the same effect. After all, academics are mobile, and, in the sciences, go where the funding is.
18
My great grandparents, Jeremiah and Ellen Lyons, from County Waterford were numbered among the “Half of Ireland’s population emigrated in the face of famine” in the mid-19th century as the Know Nothing party peaked.
By the time they had arrived in Chicago from New York, after building the railroads along with Chinese contract laborers, the sound of a new voice began to be heard on the prairie. In a letter to his friend in Springfield, Illinois, a young man on the rise wrote: “I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ … When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ ”Signed: A. LINCOLN – August 24, 1855.
It may be a long time before we ever again see a person of moral integrity and intellect presiding in the Oval Office to stop “our progress in degeneracy.” But if Pres. Trump’s continuing racist and lying behavior is not recognized as rooted in the banality of evil, it does provide clear evidence that the banality of the vulgar is the new norm for our chief executive.
18
America is ruled by a wealthy oligarchy of billionaires that own and control the Republican Party. The Know-Nothings may be the largest part of the GOP base assuming that also includes racists and Christian fundamentalists. However, the Republican Party masters know exactly what they are doing since they have financed the take-over of our electoral process. They have done so through Red Map gerrymandering (managed by Karl Rove) and voter suppression on a massive scale. They received plenty of help from the Russians which enabled this oligarchy of super-rich corporate fascist (who are far from Know-Nothings) to place an ignorant, racist, sexual predator named Donald Trump in the White House. He is their mascot who distracts the nation with his daily stupidities. These people pare far more dangerous to our democracy than any political group we have ever witnessed.
13
We have to work to slay the beast of racism. The self-defeating policies of Republicans originate in hate of others.
6
Arrogant, willful ignorance is leading our country to more human suffering. Too bad we are regressing and becoming a nation of ideological "mullahs".
6
The Republicans in Washington manipulate the know nothings in order to advance their agenda of enriching themselves and their patrons, which makes them callous and duplicitous, but not necessarily know nothings. They aren't stupid, they are the evil manipulators of the stupid - more like "care nothings."
I don't wish to disagree with with Mr. Krugman, I just happen to think the situation is even worse than it is.
9
Yes, we here are all outraged, and fearful, at what is the obvious track Trump and his GOP35%'s are following daily. Many point out the very close resemblance to Hitler's Third Reich rise in the 30's. The GOP promotes, and takes advantage of a broad swath of voters who are 'willfully ignorant', a racist tribe of willing "Know-Nothings". I know some, neighbors even, who are simply blind to the obvious. Someday's the Resistance appears to be speaking with one voice, other days the resisters appear to be splintering.
Ross Douthat's column yesterday was a confusing indictment of what he considered 'liberals'. His liberals were the party of Plutocrats. The comments section closed before I could comment but those who made it were excellent and informative, and countering Ross nicely. I hope Ross read them.
In the meantime, "Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely." Yes, we do. And leadership needs to surface that can articulate that clearly across the board.
7
Donald Trump thinks of America as another Mar-a-Lago. But we knew this already. Assume you aren't living at Walden Pond: Your 100 closest neighbors are going to pack up and move and be replaced by 100 indiscriminately chosen people from either Norway or Congo. You must choose the country. Most of us would choose Norway for reasons that have far more to do with culture and anticipated social harmony than with race.
We are at a point, in parts of academia, where you are not allowed to choose. To have a preference is to be human, but to prefer is to say that something is better than something else, and this leaves this something else, whatever it may be, in need of a "participation trophy." Is Bernini's Saint Teresa in Ecstasy superior to Duchamp's Fountain? Snob! Is Western Civilization more than slavery, colonialism, and genocide? Is it worth preserving? White supremacy!
The Times has gotten in on the act: "Oh, yeah? Do you know why Haiti is poor, President Trump? Well, let us tell you: It's all America's fault!" Notwithstanding the spoliation of colonialism and America's often dismal policies vis-à-vis that country, in truth neither legacy fully accounts for its poverty. As for leftists cornering academia, is what happened at Evergreen State healthy? That academics tend to be leftists says rather more about the way intellectuals see themselves as standing apart from and in judgement upon society, than about intelligence ("me and my friends, we're the smartest guys around").
5
Wow. Your second to last paragraph really captures the pure destructive vindictiveness of Trumpism.
3
Chatting occasionally with my know-nothing Wingnut friends tells me they know nothing about the Know-Nothing movement, Just a bunch of uninformed, ahistorical, me-centered people who think rude and stupid represents a plan for the future.
13
If Paul K. is correct -- and, sadly, i believe he is -- then what we have in this "president" and his government of toadies, roadies, and lickspittles is another example of Life imitating Art.
To quote the perennially endearing Sgt. Schultz: "I know nozzing! Nozzing!"
(So why am i not laughing?)
2
If only Hilary had used the term “know-nothings” instead of “deplorables” she might be President today
7
America is ruled by a wealthy oligarchy of billionaires that own and control the Republican Party. The Know-Nothings may be the largest part of the GOP base assuming that also includes racists. However, the Republican Party masters know exactly what they are doing since they have financed the take-over of our electoral process. They have done so through Red Map gerrymandering (managed by Karl Rove) and voter suppression on a massive scale. They received plenty of help from the Russians which enabled this oligarchy of super-rich corporate fascists (who are far from Know-Nothings) to place an ignorant, racist, sexual predator named Donald Trump in the White House. He is their mascot who distracts the nation with his daily stupidities. These people pare far more dangerous to our democracy than any political group we have ever witnessed.
3
Monday night Fox’s Tucker Carlson, full of bile and spittle, and with great indignation, defended the administration's position that anyone from poor, disorganized countries should not be allowed into the USA by arguing there are essentially no standards for entry.
According to Carlson, elites go to schools such as Stanford and Harvard, which brag “about how many valedictorians they reject”. The number of students Harvard accepted that were “poorly educated Haitians who don’t speak English, let’s see: none.”
Yet these same elites would not choose to go to a country like the USA: “If Harvard accepted students as America chooses its immigrates, our elites wouldn’t sent their kids there.” Similar statements around Google and Amazon.
He claims both the Harvards and Googles care about their schools and companies, but don’t care about America saying it’s “sickening and hypocritical, and we’ve had enough of it.” Who are the “we”?
“If America must give citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants, Harvard aught to give free tuition to 1,100 undocumented students. If it’s OK to sneak into your city illegally, and use the public services, why is it wrong to live in a dorm in Princeton without being enrolled 11M.” Really? Maybe Tucker and his followers should be allowed into Hells Angels: I hear they have a pretty rigorous vetting process.
If the viewers of this tripe can not differentiate between schools and companies, and the USA, then we have a really big problem.
3
Abraham Lincolns Lyceaum Address in 1838 on "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions" was definitive of the values later pursued by Lincoln .... the foundation of the "real"republican orthodoxy of "inclusiveness of all factions"as the fundamental glue to keep the newborn constitutional Republic of the United States ,intact and united for healthy growth.
The current, so called, "Conservative" Republican orthodoxy is "I got mine", "were in power",lets keep it at any cost",............."feeding our political and corporate donors (our real constituents) is of primary concern"........and as for the Republic ,keep it safe by stirring up animosity for Muslims,immigrants,and the darker skinned to retain our "base" constituents .......but.always wave the flag and support our troops".
Lincoln would be shocked that Republicans evolved into the"know nothings" he abhorred.
With "democrats" now joining and supporting "republicans" by "representing" the the bankers and financial institutions over American citizens.......to remove restrictions on the financial gambling,that caused the economic crash of 2018...........the endemic and institutionalized opportunistic corruption of POLITICS............is alive and well in America,growing from strength to strength !!!
2
Look at the deafening silence after the passage of the tax bill. If such a bill had passed in France, you would have had revolution in the streets ever since, till the government took it back. Are all "know-nothings"? Ignorance and prejudices form only one factor among the causes of the deafening silence. Quality journalism should look into the other causes: NYT?
8
Anyone willing to place a bet that someone well known from Trumpland will soon respond to this well written, fact based article by calling its writer and those who agree with him Know It Alls?
5
The present day Know-Nothings are hired help elected to serve the needs of the 0.1%. Their primary responsibility is to keep the know-nothings distracted with worry about the horrors of wedding cake consuming gays, job stealing Mexican rapists, and government subsided health care for people who don't look like them.
"So will our modern know-nothings prevail? "
Hopefully the excesses of Trump and his collaborators will convince the 0.1% to change direction before it's too late.
An over supply of useful idiots is not in anyone's best interest.
7
"Wilfully ignorant" are members of the entire U.S. Congress and Senate, elected by money, bribed by lobbies and coerced by special interest groups. This is democracy at its very worst.
This sham democracy is the reason the U.S. has lost its charisma and has become, in the words of Fareed Zakaria, 'irrelevant' on the world stage: Abominable Wars of Choice, with millions murdered and displaced in pursuit of narrow commercial interests, have been followed by a racist presidency that has alienated the entire globe and has placed the desires of Israel above world opinion in declaring Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
While the U.S. is busy huffing and puffing its way to global irrelevance, Russia, China, India and the rest of the world are pursuing their own agenda, no longer afraid of Dollar hegemony or the U.S. military. This is because their leaders are "wilfully intelligent." While the U.S. has spent $ 8 trillion on wars of choice this century alone, China is reviving the ancient Silk Road with an investment of $ 8 trillion. China, Russia, India and Europe -- and not Syria or Iran -- are the greatest existential threat to U.S. welfare and prosperity.
10
There’s no bigger know-nothing than Paul Krugman, the genius who assured us that the stock market would “never” recover after We The People elected Donald Trump as our President.
3
An excellent warning to all. Frightening to think that the mentality and methods of Know Nothigs could be so popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, some resembling those of Ku Klux Klan. At present, the spiritual descedants of Know Nothings are the literal bearers of this name: they are neither capable of Knowing, nor want to Know Anything.
4
Yes, they "are killing the very things that made America great", but NOW we can clearly see what has been going on since 1980, in these racist's attitudes unmasked for all to see and there is no sanctuary for those who support and aid our "so-called" president in this evil. He's a bully and we need to join hands and confront the bully, just like you would as a child, the school yard bully. "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". The day of reckoning is coming and justice will be served.
4
The worst of he know-nothings sits in the White House. We are "led" by a man who is so stupid that he can't understand why people from countries where they enjoy better quality of life and a higher standard of living -- like Norway --are not lining up in droves to come to the United States.
Meanwhile, the members of his party do everything they possibly can to further depress the standard of living for the average American. But can they really be described as know-nothings? No, they cannot. They know exactly what they are doing.
4
I see an irony daily. Know-nothing whites living on a combination of generous social security and disability. Neither is enough for a solitary life, but you put a household on inherited homeplace land with a couple of seniors and a disability income and you have the recipe for a comfortable if humble life The irony? The main life experience is TV, beer and a little hunting. So the beliefs are programmed and here--only here--people are disincentivized, as conservative econopunks say, to learn anything. Entitled, ignorant and cheerfully, ebulliently Republican. My neighbors.
7
GOP claims (falsely) that it is the 'party of Lincoln'.
May I remind these embracers of ignorance of this -
I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come.
-Abraham Lincoln
3
“Three steps forward, two steps back.” Most of us believe the truth of that old adage. That is what we are seeing born out in the Obama—Trump comparisons, some readers have made here. Many will see the election of Trump as more like four steps to the rear, but that is temporary. The rest of the world progresses while Trump and his cohorts flail impotently. I have a feeling Trumpism is a response to a five-steps-forward wave percolating now, but bursting out fully this November.
6
They absolutely ARE know-Nothings. However, they THINK they know everything. " We don't need no stinkin educashun , we just need our bibles and Guns ". So it's their patriotic duty to " accept " handouts from Blue States. The Civil War never ended, it just paused. And it's not looking good for the BLUE Team. Seriously.
5
How have you got your prize money invested for this grim future? All in for a well-run country, namely China?
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” -- today's tweet, an MLK quote, from Neil degrasse Tyson.
3
I think this is spot on, although I'm still having trouble discerning the difference between people who are bigoted, xenophobic and anti-immigrant, and those who are willfully ignorant, rejecting facts that might conflict with their prejudices. Isn't the latter simply the basis for the former?
1
Trump is the "mule"(think Asimov) who is here today, gone tomorrow. I believe the election in November is of critical importance, especially the senate. If the Dems win, the party is over for Trump and the Rs. Without Hillary and Obama to blame in the 2020s, where is the wedge. The independents will have a big voice in the coming elections and they are fed up right now. That's what kills the Rs.
3
Excellent article. But I ask myself: Is "the base" reading this kind of article? Even worse, would they understand it even if they did? They are reported to still be holding fast to Trump's version of a leader : as hater and blamer.
3
When one takes a broad look at the last few decades and results of America's
many wars--Korea, Vietnam, Iraq.... that have resulted in perhaps 20 million deaths and massive destruction, is it possible that the world would indeed be better off with isolationist know-nothings at the helm in America?
2
January 16, 2018
The preservation of New York Times readership begins and is forever with this king of article by Dr. Krugman - We know what we know and aren't afraid to tell it like it is -and so with a breath of insight we can recover from the avoidance distraction of life be for entertainment and free for all rage - but best as always we learn from history and then take responsibility for maturity in the citizenry as a pledge of allegiance to What is forever American truly the best for all to be greater to the sum of the parts enlightening from cradle to grave then earned heavenly eternal life.
jja Manhattan, N.Y.
1
It's a mistake to see anti-immigration sentiments as abnormal. They are normal and inevitable. People are basically tribal and until we acknowledge that we will keep making wrong decisions for bad reasons. It's certainly a huge mistake to ignore such feelings and allow waves of people from completely different cultures to come into the country just because we have room for them at the bottom, fetching, carrying, cleaning and sweeping.
4
The worst part is that Trump doesn't consider why his ancestor came to the United States. Apparently he has no interest in his own family history. In my opinion this is the lowest point in one being uneducated.
7
Following a steady trajectory since Nixon's Southern strategy, the GOP continues to devolve towards the Party of the ignorant, the bigoted, the fearful and resentful, the losers of economic globalization (which rewards those who value education and innovation) and the just plain gullible and stupid.
When that largely "red state" voting bloc looks at "blue state" America (with their prosperous, cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse and tolerant cultures) - of course they see their bete noir - those dreaded "elites". When you're proudly wallowing in a "know-nothing" world - everyone else is an "elite" by comparison.
For the last 50 years, the GOP's Faustian bargain (as Prof. Krugman explained so well in his January 5th column) is to bait the electoral hook with racism, resentment and retrograde fantasies of a "Lost America" - and then pick the pockets of the losers who fall for this "bait and switch" scam as the GOP guts the Treasury to repay the Plutocracy.
But now with Trump, the GOP dog has finally caught the proverbial car - and they find they're stuck with Trump because he's the epitome of the crude underbelly of the anti-intellectual strain of American politics that Richard Hofstadter warned us about over fifty years ago. The GOP Emperor now stands naked - his vulgarian soul worshiped by his Know-Nothing base while the entire world (and a majority of Americans) recoils in horror at the sight of "American Exceptionalism" (GOP-style) revealed in all its repugnant squalor.
9
Thank you Dr. Krugman. You absolutely nailed it, once again! What astounds me is the obvious "PRIDE" these people show of their ignorance.
9
Every morning I wake up in the hope this has all been some horrible nightmare. I smack myself upside the head with great hope, and for emphasis to separate fiction from reality in my still sleep clouded waking brain.
Then I open my eyes, look at the news and Trump really is the President.
I have such a headache.
7
Back in the 1990s, Krugman published an infamous essay in Fortune Magazine titled “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”.
In that essay Krugman praises the likes of Enron and Goldman Sachs, so reading Krugman’s claims about what a “productive county” is in the USA in 2018 is a bit rich. (And to be clear, no, the real estate speculation of the likes of Trump would not qualify as a “productive employment” in X county–even if Trump bothered to pay his workers.)
Frankly this is an attempt by Krugman to divide, he hasn’t learnt from Hillary’s failure.
1
Demonizing and insulting people is of course unacceptable, but the idea that we should slow down immigration is not. The country is no longer mostly empty, and we have a lot of native-born citizens hurting from having to compete with low-wage immigrants.
I agree that a few high-skill immigrants make the country better for the rest of us. Low-skill immigrants probably do not.
Not to mention cultural change. Too much diversity is a set-up for intra-societal conflict, a view that liberals, whistling through the graveyard, dismiss out of hand. They're blind.
6
Ignorance is defined as "a lack of knowledge or information", quite simply not-knowing-something. Is ignorance also knowing something that is incorrect, wrong or non-factual? Where to racists come from, and how do we stuff them back into the holes from which they crawled? These are really difficult subjects to deal with and resolve.
2
Thank you for not caving to the demonizing of higher education and the conspiracy theory that conservative professors are being blocked from getting jobs at the blue State institutions.
A good professor is open to ideas and testing facts, the definition of liberalism. They don't have to be open to false or unfounded opinions like climate science or creationism.
Colleges are on the defensive when they should be defending knowledge, and they have been put there by know nothings like Anne Coulter. She doesn't want to debate facts, she wants to mock the defenders of our core principles and call them weak and stupid. That is how she makes a living. No one should give her a serious platform to speak. Instead she belongs on a celebrity roast TV show along side other comic clowns who like to deflate the egos of more famous people than they are.
4
Conservatism of the current G. O. P. variety thrives on ignorance, as it did in the days of slavery. Frederick Douglass noted that slaveowners at all costs tried to prevent their slaves from reading. It was far safer to keep them ignorant so that they wouldn't get "uppity" thoughts. The same attitude prevails today. If you keep as many Americans ignorant as possible, you'll prevent them from having dangerous thoughts about climate change, race relations, and the rest.
6
The GOP is fighting capitalism. Capitalism doesn't tolerate stupidity long because it inevitably comes with penalties. They get rid of it because it makes them weak in competition. Capitalism seeks improvement; the GOP fights evolution based on evidence. Capitalism promotes on merit. The GOP can't define the word. Capitalism is fair. The GOP has no future if it fights fair.
Trump is the biggest mistake they ever made. I don't underestimate the ugliness ahead, but I'm optimistic. For them this fight is already lost.
5
To be proud of being a know-nothing and to crow that there is no need to know anything is incredibly destructive to the evolution of humanity. To put know nothings up as candidates reaches a level of cynicism that boggles the mind, and brings our democratic project to its knees. Both sides need to return to electing people with experience and interest in solving problems and moving our country forward. We must not even listen nor encourage people who want to enter some non-existent time machine to go "back" to a time that never was.
5
Only late in life did I notice no politician, regardless the appellation, lives in poverty.
4
I'd be happy if, for once, PK talked about how to deal with the growing divergence in America, rather than simply labeling the GOP as evil and considering his work for the day complete. If the divergence is proceeding apace, then we're likely to see more electoral coalitions of the sort that Trump assembled. Calling the GOP and their voters the Stupid Party really only helps win votes for the Stupid Party (see, now I'm doing it). We need something a little more constructive. How about climbing down from your Ivy League Ivory Tower and suggesting massive investment in non-university tertiary education. The people in the US who truly benefit from a 4-year bachelor's degree is likely well less than 50%, but the rest lack the marketable skills to enter the middle class without some further post-secondary education. What can we do to provide reliably high-quality non-University tertiary education?
.
Let's try to keep the discussion positive and policy oriented. Sour grapes whining and name calling from PK has never changed anything and likely never will. We need a positive, constructive agenda.
4
A beautiful example. I listen to C-Span's Washington Journal many mornings during the week. Call in from all over the country (and world) to comment on the day's discussed issues. This morning, a man called in to comment about "the dirty secret" of immigration in this country: to paraphrase, the reason we have an immigration problem is because of the 20 to 30 to 40 million abortions annually (I forgot exact number he used because I was so taken aback by his stupidity )which kill babies, implying if they were to live, we'd have enough workers. Incredulous.
6
I'm a university professor. And I can assure that you that Krugman has missed the point -- as he does at least biweekly in public.
The barbarians are not at the gates any longer. They are INSIDE the gates. We have seen the enemy of higher education -- and he is us. Well, if not us, he is administrators and university presidents who have sold the universities' birthright by kow-towing to "diversity" commissars and thought police in Washington, DC who threaten to cut off federal contracts if they don't ideologically cleanse their universities.
I had to chuckle when I read that the "more or less" (weasel alert!) official position of the GOP is that evolution never happened. Here is an experiment for Krugman: Try suggesting that evolution may have resulted in differences between men and women, and see what happens.
Wait! That experiment has already been run. The President of Harvard -- Krugman's colleague, Larry Summers -- was run out town on a rail because he dared to do that. As Richard Posner said: “For these actions, Summers -- the most exciting and dynamic president that Harvard has had since James Conant -- has been (or at least has felt) compelled to undergo a humiliating course of communist-style ‘reeducation,’ involving repeated and increasingly abject confessions, self-criticism, and promises to reform. He has been paraded in a metaphoric dunce cap. Why has he consented to participate in this ritual of self-abasement? Why has he refused to face down his critics?”
3
We didn't become the most powerful and democratic nation in the world because we kept people out, but because we were the world's melting pot that welcomed immigrants from all over the planet. The genetic mix proved to be the right formula for success. It would be catastrophic if the modern know-nothings led to the devolution of America's greatness. And ironic if they did it during a time when "make America great again" was their empty political chant.
5
It occurs to me, that by Krugman's own definition, he perfectly fits into the mold of a "Know-Nothing"--especially as he defines such a person as "willfully ignorant, someone who rejects facts that might conflict with his or her prejudices".
After all, how can someone who claims to be an expert in the realm of economics ignore what is going on in the economy right now? After 8 years of the anti-business, hyper-tax and regulate Obama Administration, in which Progressives fell in love with the phrase "you did not build that", the economy has roared back to life under Conservative guidance. How can he remain "willfully ignorant" (his words), of what is actually occurring all around him?
--Stock market at new highs
--Unemployment at record lows
--Consumer confidence at record highs
--Workforce participation and incomes--rising
--Business sentiment???....giddy.
--Corporations moving jobs back to the U.S.
How can any self-respecting economist witness the rapidly improving landscape--and insist that removing regulations--and cutting taxes for businesses and individuals is actually a bad thing?
Trump has not only reinvigorated the American economy--he has ignited the world economy as well. Yet Krugman remains "willfully ignorant", as these Animal Spirits race around the globe.
But it's worse than that. After blaming the Bush Administration for Obama's failed 8-year experiment, he wants to credit Obama's policies for our current success. Willfully ignorant--indeed.
3
The Grand Old Party has been on a path of self-destruction for decades- anarchists et al. Most of my lifetime Midwest Republican friends have left the GOP or sit on the side in despair.
We need a GN(ew)P before the country collapses- NOW!
4
Reading this editorial amused me in a slightly concerned sort of way. It offers such egregious stereotyping and absurd caricaturization, but with wit and obviously offered for fun. But after reading scores of the reader posts I am appalled, no longer concerned but rather actually frightened by what I read.
Anyone who lumps groups of people together by some arbitrary standard they themselves impose (eg; a "one drop" rule) is guilty of the worst thing a human being can do: they have stopped thinking and begun acting on pure gut instinct. When speaking as if of subhumans about everyone who disagrees with your orthodoxy you offer no logic, no reason, no evidence, no discernment. Rather, you create strawpeople to flay in public, for what end? Virtue signalling? Tribal solidarity? Revenge?
Dehumanization of individuals by assigning arbitrary labels to them, then declaring what they are and what they think, followed by ruthlessly attacking individuals to whom that false image has been assigned is the foundation of what we all abhor: racism, sexism, religious bigotry, fascism. Next time you attack "the nameless others," please, for the love of America think about what you are actually doing.
2
The truth cares not what you think. It is that unmovable event or moment in time that cannot be changed or altered. It is impervious to all the mud that is slung against it. It is like a rock. And when the cleansing rains of time wash away the mud and slime that attempts to bury the stone, only the rock of truth will remain. And so, as with science, it cares not what you think.
It ignores the sounds of your alternative realities and false proclamations, and only the stone-deaf ears of truth and science will remain. Because it what it is, and none of your lies can change that.
It is impervious to change. It is the past to which there is no return. It is the act committed, that cannot be undone. All attempts to deny, change, misdirect, or disregard the truth are futile. Once the winds of change blow away the layers of lies, heaped upon the stone, only the rock of truth remains. It cares not what you think.
All the lies that you tell, to support the lies, that support the lies that you have told before, will just dig you deeper, into a hole, that you cannot escape. When you are finally done, digging that hole that you have made for yourselves, by ignoring what is true. The rock of truth will bury you. The truth cares not what you say. The truth cares not what you think. It what it is, and none of your lies can change that.
1
"..There are always new groups to hate"
A new mantra for our modern Republican Party--new groups to hate, to target, to blame, to scapegoat, you name it!
Why is it that these people take "ignorance is bliss" to a new level and just let Fox News spoon-feed them nonsense? I get it that there are many things not working in this economy but seriously? They speak of others needing to take responsibility but never bother with any self-examination or responsibility taking themselves.
4
Trumpism hates and fears foreigners, but the mainstream Democrats' lust for military misadventures, no matter how evidently and repeatedly they have failed, qualifies as 'know little' if not 'know nothing'. Their absorption in the latter day Red scare does not recommend them as steady and sober.
Americans who know something have good reason to be worried.
1
Dems cannot have a real debate about immigration because all they want to do is import poor, uneducated, unskilled workers and keep them poor, uneducated, and unskilled with their policies. For Dems, immigration is about increasing the number of Dem voters, nothing more elegant than that. Hence, instead of sound policy proposals, Dems often invoke meaningless Orwellian talking points when discussing such as “diversity is strength.” For all of the lefties that follow Krugman I have two questions: What are the benefits of importing unskilled, uneducated, poor immigrants that have difficulting assimilating to American culture? How can you claim to support the “working class” when simultaneously advocating for the importation of people that directly compete for low skill occupations?
4
DungTongued DudDon is ripping the still-beating heart out of Democracy&Decency. JFK was killed on my 19th birthday. I have never felt more fear nor more shame for our country than I have this last terrible year. In a cry no more than a breath, 'The horror. The horror.'
5
Corporate America has done everything in it's power to destroy the working class in America, to turn them all into cheap labor. So, who do those workers who have had their jobs shipped overseas their incomes slashed blame? They blame the poor workers in Mexico and China who now have those jobs, not their bosses who moved them so they could make more profits.
Corporate America is the enemy of the working class; and, the GOP are their puppets.
5
Betsy DeVos, Secty of Ed, is the thought, word, and deed of advancing the practice of know-nothingism in our schools.
2
I'm in entire agreement with Krugman's overview of America's long history of xenophobia and bigotry towards every immigrant group that followed the "settlers," as well as the parallel he draws to the toxic attitudes of today's GOP and especially the ignoramus-in-chief, Donald Trump. But just a small reservation about the use of the 19th-century Know-Nothings as the ideological predecessors of Trump & Company. One of the principal reasons the Know-Nothings opposed Irish immigration as passionately as they did was because of the well-known racist anti-black attitudes widespread in the Irish immigrant population. Whatever their other failings, the Know-Nothings got one thing right.
"we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely"
Exactly what Hugo Chavez and Maduro say! How’s that working out for them?
Wasn't Socrates, the wisest and best of men, an admitted know-nothing?
"My only true knowledge is that I am ignorant."
Admitting ignorance may be the gold standard of politics.
Derogatory remarks about Republicans aside,Mr Krugmans rationalizations for allowing illegal workers in the US, is but a form of corruption putting lawbreakers above the honest employers.
1
Just watch "Idiocracy" ( dir. Mike Judge 2006) if you are more inclined to see than read the place where we are headed. It was a dark comedy but we are living in a dark reality.
5
The know-nothing-ism conceals the hidden agenda of the ultra rich which is simply make itself a self perpetuating plutocratic class.
2
It starts young: I encountered some of these types when I taught at the university. I called them "militantly ignorant." They expressed a will to not know. It was painful as a teacher, and painful again as a citizen.
2
“— they’ll kill the very things that made it great.”
I’ll put this down with your other predictions about Trump - the market will crash and not recover, T will never get sustained high GNP and manufacturing jobs will not return they’re gone for ever.
Speaking of know-nothing.
2
I was re-reading a book, too, Professor. It was called The Stupids Die, a comic fable for children. Sadly, its protagonists would fit in all too well with today's GOP: When the lights go out, they'll think that they've gone to heaven.
2
I've said it before and I'll say it again...The Biblical story of Cain and Abel is being played out again. Abel is represented by the people who can adapt to new technology and move to places that are evolving. Cain's crowd is stuck in the past and can't get out of its own way. It's Darwin's "law of economics." The anger and envy of Cain's crowd at being left/staying behind is expressed by Trump and the GOP. These fools must be defeated at all costs...
"It really does look like 'President Donald Trump' and markets are plunging. If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is 'never'" Paul Krugman, November 9, 2016. Paul Krugman is the ultimate know-nothing. He pushed for a mortgage bubble in the 2000's, and he pushed for the entire US health system to be like the VA. Everything he has predicted has been wrong. It is amazing that someone who is wrong so often, and seems to know nothing, still has a job.
2
why is it clear that we need strategies to share? Why don't we need separation?
It horrifies me that we have as President a man who thinks of impoverivished nations as “shitholes” and doesn’t hesitate to speak those thoughts aloud to the world. It terrifies me that this man has toadies from the school that brought us the Emperor's New Clothes, who will simply lie about a thing the President said in front of a crowd of people, as though lying about it will undo it. It disgusts me that other presidential toadies mutter and prevaricate and, ultimately, remain silent. And all this over something that is, a true it’s base, just another vulgar trumpian distraction.
“Surely we’d be a shrunken, stagnant, second-rate society.”
With nuclear weapons. Lots and lots of nuclear weapons. Lovely.
3
I think I read somewhere that the child has already been born who will make this a majority minority country. The majority of human beings are people of color. In a few years, the majority of voters in the United States will be people of color.
What we see and hear now are the screams and anguish of a dying political party that sold its soul a long time ago in order to peddle racism and white supremacy.
The United States is US. We get the government we deserve.
2
The recently-enacted federal tax legislation is a classic example of the successful Republican effort to cut "the growing regions [of America] down," encapsulated so succinctly in 2012 by Rick Santorum who responded to President Obama's call to universalize Americans' opportunity to pursue higher education with the words, "What a snob!"
Deplorable!
1
This column is one of your best, and that's saying something. The dual "know-nothing" thesis is perfectly sound.
One example of the enrichment of America by immigrants and refugees is the Golden Age of Hollywood. An influx of people with uncompromising respect for education that began in the periods you mention and culminated in the run-up to World War II provided the basis for popular entertainment abounding in grown-up ideas, language, music, and visual pleasures.
By the 1940s, it seemed that even a Warner Brothers potboiler couldn't be put to bed till underpaid souls with memories of beauty had made it ravishing. In front of the camera, the definitive reptilian lowlife was created by a speaker of seven languages and connoisseur of art who had fled persecution in Bucharest for New York's Lower East Side at the age of ten, Emmanuel Goldenberg (aka Edward G. Robinson).
Those people are gone, but their standards remain to challenge and inspire their adopted country.
2
What is so sad to me is that the progress it seemed the country had made in the last 40 years was an illusion. We're the same bunch of prejudiced ignoramuses we always were. It just took Trump to reveal the truth about this country. While there are millions of good, decent people, our basic DNA is unchanged.
2
Read it. Weep. Then take action. It's our obligation as a nation made great by multiculturism.
5
Homo sapiens are 99.9 genetically the same, Trump and his supporters are really focused on that 1/10 of a percentage. Makes sense when you think about their economic policies and who they are focused on.
2
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely."
Very well said!
But why wasting your precious time for the contemporary Know-Nothings, instead of promoting and explaining those very policies which might avoid a prorogation of the current presidential nightmare?
I imagine that most of nyt readers are not Know-Nothings and they would be eager to be informed and communicate better to limit the Trumpism impact next election.
1
And, Mr. Eisenberg, we do know the name of that creek, up which we are.
1
PK "Remarkably, a clear majority of Republicans now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on America."
Donald Trump has inagurated a new era of American politics. An imbecile/ nationalistic era characterized by de-construction of American power built upon immigration/diversity and education.
The US dominant position in global affairs is not sustained on raw military power alone. It is built in the pursuit of culture/knowledge by thousands of the best high learning centers in the world.
The decline of the US will certainly be accelerated in the next few years. It remains to be seen whether American voters will reject or give Trump another term in 2020. Something is rotten in America's democracy.
3
'Fun' to read about the 'know-nothings' (actually, 'schadenfreude'), the entire republican party and the poorly educated 'left-behinds' by a worldwide economy based on a digital revolution and a superb technology based on science and human ingenuity and imagination, and the creativity that gave rise of the things we stand in awe and make our life transformational. But only if we accept serendipity, and the humility of our rather fortuitous role when all the knowledge and it's understanding came about with the convergence of universities and their role in R & D, and the infra-structure available, and the vibrancy of immigrants willing to risk their lives and fortune for a better tomorrow, recognizing that the inclusion of all and everybody in the community was essential, and that the richness of our diversity plays a transcendental role. The current Trump drive in trying to disenfranchise non-whites is the fear of losing this false, and stupid, idea of 'white superiority', by a growing multi-ethnic majority, and the loss of power. We are at a pivotal moment where we must shake our shackles of a remaining institutionalized racist first-class society, and break with the systematic 'fear, hate and division' our "Ugly American"- in chief- is promoting. For that, we all must educate ourselves in the subconscious remnants of discrimination we may still harbor, and become truly prudent in our lives (do what's right, however difficult). Do we have the will, and courage to change?
"the 2016 election largely pitted these rising regions against those left behind, which is why counties carried by Hillary Clinton ... account for a remarkable 64 percent of U.S. G.D.P., almost twice as much as Trump counties."
It's the old story -- the educated vs. the uneducated, the skilled vs. the unskilled, and it begins in grade schools in which the smart kids are always the target of the bullies and the less intelligent kids. It's a reflection of Trump himself -- the dumbest kid in class who becomes a bully because he knows he's not one of the intelligent kids who will be successful in life without Daddy handing him a million dollars and real estate business.
3
As I have said before, Trump's mantra is misheard. It really is "Make America Second Rate Again".
1
Or, there is the third way...beloved to late Boomers...the immortal words of Stalag 13's lone Dissenter, Sgt. Hans Schultz, "I know nothing. I see nothing. I know NOTHING!"
1
Kudos to Krugman for recognizing the settlement of N.America and what made it great. However he left out Manifest Destiny which provided plenty of room for growing and enabled the waves of immigration.
In terms of profs being liberal or conservative, I wonder how he would classify the politics of someone who said they believed the US has a right to control its borders and that immigrants should follow the process to enter the country. Are all of these folks know nothings? You say they are? Good, keep up your drumbeat. Others must be reminded how you as a good liberal like to play havoc with the daily lives of working class folks. BTW Paul how's that racial desegregation going in your NYC schools?
1
No mystery here. The new tax cuts perpetuate the gap between the educated and the uneducated, and thus, the rich and the poor. The deliberate and determined destruction of the public education system in the US is by far the most insidious and effective way to continue and, in fact, speed this trend. SAD!!!
2
Trump's victory was a big win for 'the know nothings'. These Know Nothings will not lead us to Greatness. People who get excited about a Wall but hate the idea of Universal Healthcare will ruin this Society. We have to vote these people out of office. We need a Democratic Leader who is not afraid to tell the truth about how wretched Trump and his followers are.
2
Those of us born in the 1960s weren't surprised when unpleasant people like Trump and Bannon gained political power. They are typical of a whole generation of people their age. We've all had numerous bosses and various other dealings with this entitled generation. We've come to expect that people in that generation haven't done their homework or paid their dues to be knowledgeable in their careers, and that they will also show remarkable bias against people from other generations as well as the foreign-born and non-white.
The parties have become the Do-Nothings.
2
This has been 50 years in the making ever since the protests of the 60s - very obvious! We, the people, in the 60s were rejecting everything that this group of bigoted, racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic "people" were promoting to steal our dignity, humanity and of course, money. All about money -- predatory capitalism -- and power/control. We, the people, protested against more war, capitalism, predatory-consumerism, and imprisonment to control behavior. Uneducated people do not know history and do not rise up to protest -- they have no tools. Dumbing down America was/is purposeful. RESIST! MARCH!
11
Ignorance and racism are built into homo-sapiens. We might evolve out of these traits but are not there yet. Yes - Irish and German immigrants were reviled. But the critical point to remember is that the USA had a system in place to (more or less) welcome and protect immigrants from anywhere in the world. The danger we are in now is not that we still have ignorance and racism, but that the system to protect people from the consequences of this are being systematically eroded. Fixing this will take a re-discovery of what it means to be a genuinely welcoming country - a re-learning of what it took to make the USA truly great. Hint - it wasn't a stupid hat with a logo on the head of someone even dumber.
4
I'd like to give an example of my great-grandparents, who today would be considered the class of "preferred immigrants". They were Norwegian. They arrived in the late 1890's, and by 1918, had managed to completely implode. The mother (of seven) was permanently committed to an asylum in Chicago for mental illness, and the alcoholic father was found at home several years later, having committed suicide by hanging. They left their seven children to be dispersed by friends and adoption agencies.
They were very white, so their failure to thrive in America is not seen as a failure to integrate into a new country, or being from a country of failure. Their offspring, who are white, were able to compensate for their misfortunes by being able to assimilate into the white population of America with only the discriminatory trait of not being middle class.
It's much easier to be unsuccessful when you are part of the majority, where you can be less conspicuous. The safety net, being your complexion, allows failure itself to be assimilated into the country of adoption. It is the bootstrap, there for the taking, that you use to pull yourself up with.
That's the cruelest lesson in this ugly Trump story.
8
For those in places affected the most by outsourcing, NAFTA, CAFTA etc. the know-nothings are the Democrats in D.C who close their eyes and shut their eyes every time layoffs happen and another company decides to move to Mexico or India. Note the current priority of our Dems, it is DACA. We must move heaven and earth and shut down the government for a few hundred thousand immigrants while the rest in flyover land wait till the Dems have done every bit of good in the name of identity politics. Until the Dems learn to tend to their own people here legally and are citizens and struggling for healthcare, jobs etc, they are going to keep shrinking and shrinking into a party which one day will become the 'Immigrant and Minority' party rather than the party of the middle class. Krugman as the dutiful foot soldier of this Democrat party trots this column out without asking, is DACA the priority of the hour?
3
Republicans will prevail. Take the Railroad; the highly Republican railroad. The last crash, where the Engineer blamed the trainee for his operational lack of awareness over a bridge is an idiotic engineer claim to save his lazy sleeping skin. The engineer ought to be responsible for failure to “train the trainee” properly. However, that Engineer is right by book of rules. If progressives and liberals don’t understand the hypocrisy of the laws that they have written to assign blame for billion dollar companies it will be another Stormy Daniels New Year.
What is most galling about the current crop of know-nothings is their smug pleasure at rubbing their ignorance in our faces. Those Republicans insisting that Trump said nothing of the kind for which he currently takes heat not only know the truth, they also know that we know they are lying. Not just to Cotton favor with Trump, they are reasserting that their majority gives them control of not only Congress, but as well the truth.
2
Mr. Krugman has written this column as an economic policy know-nothing. (BTW, the name of the Know-Nothing comes from the secretive nature of the movement, a member was to respond that “I know nothing” about the movement to outsiders; not the willful ignorance of a ‘know nothing.”)
45 wants to take away lotteries, permanent admission on ‘temporary” visas, chain migration (being qualified to be an American based on who family members had a certain degree of progenerative sex with), and so forth. What he wants to institute is skills based immigration, like Canada’s, here’s a version: https://nyti.ms/2vnARDh
The NYT: “Yet when it comes to immigration, Canada’s policies are…ruthlessly rational, which is why Canada now claims the world’s most prosperous and successful immigrant population.” https://nyti.ms/2tjFj8I
Had this system been in place the ethnic and religious prejudices Krugman cites might not have been reiterated with every new generation. Surely, this is not the American Way we want to pass on to our children? By changing to a skill based test, a most egalitarian and objective entrée to American society, we can find common ground with all the immigrants, they worked to become American and participate in the American Dream as we worked hard to maintain the American Dream. Isn’t this a better than we found it plan #MAGA? OR Will all those future highly skilled immigrants move to red states which are traditionally more favorable to business and vote them blue? Let’s see.
4
The more 'clever' Trump supporters will remind me that Trump is a master communicator; skilled in the art of persuasion. In their mind, he is playing chess.
And on Trump's chessboard, there's the king (who can move anywhere on the board because he rides a magic golf cart), the queen (who can't move unless the king needs her for a photo shoot), the rooks (which are just Trump towers and therefore can't move because moving towers are just stupid), the Knights (which are Roy Moores riding on their Sassys), and the bishops (Evangelical preachers to explain to the sheep how Trump is a man of God)...
Oh wait, that's not Trump's chessboard. That's Putin's. My bad.
6
Republicans want to bring America down to their level so they won't feel inferior. The last thing they want is Nigerians who are better educated than they are.
6
Trump himself admitted he loves the "poorly educated" which comes as no surprise, as he basically sold the down-on-his-luck white population a whole lot of snake oil.
3
The reality of the situations is that a vote for the Republican party is the equivalent of saying that you despise American values. It's shameful.
4
We are on the fast tract to realize the prophetic 2006 Mike Judge movie "Idiocracy"
3
"..the know-nothings in power are doing all they can to undermine the very foundations of American greatness."
Identifying the sickness of the present administration and his party is becoming a little redundant; the Know Nothing party is not going to change in the near foreseeable future. Sadly, neither seems the Democratic Party to want to, let's call it the Do Nothing party.
I don't think Republican representatives are stupid, it's just that they've all but given up the pretense of representing their voters' interests. The Democrats are still pretending.
Chest-thumping American greatness is not going to help, you've allowed the rich to take over your country, which is the work of both parties. If you want a real democracy, you have to fight to get it back.
4
This article expresses my fears and indignation about these aptly named 'know-nothings'. It was also a memory jog back to the movement I had learned about in American history. There is no logic to ignorance and that is my greatest perplexity about this backward movement. Trump, his unqualified, inept Cabinet, and ruling GOP have embraced ignorance as a defense and a cult. They do not make sense and ignorance is not going to work as avoidance of being held accountable for your deeds. Get over it.
Would you want an ignorant surgeon to operate on you? Would you want an ignorant mechanic fixing your car? A car that carries you and your family safely to destinations? Would you want an ignorant lawyer as your last means of defense against imprisonment? Would you want an ignorant pilot driving your plane? Would you want an ignorant pharmacist working with medication formulae? Would you want an ignorant teacher or professor in charge of your children's education? Would you want to read ignorant news not based on fact or truth?
Would you want an ignorant Congress, and an ignorant president? My answer to all of the above is a firm no.
6
The know-nothings remind me of that classic Russian joke:
There were two peasant farmers. Both lived a subsistence existence, raising potatoes and beets and such. One of them had a pig, a brood sow who every year gave birth to piglets. As a result that farmer’s family had not only potatoes and beets on its dinner table, but also pork and bacon. One day the other farmer was plowing his field, and the plow turned up a magic lantern. When the farmer rubbed the lantern, a genie appeared, and offered that farmer one wish. He thought long and hard, and then said, “kill my neighbor’s pig”. That’s what Trump voters want, to kill their neighbors’ pigs. Drag the others down to their miserable level...
14
Ironic, isn't it, that the most incapable, unread, inarticulate, obtuse president in modern history is turning this nation back toward the bigotry of the past? More sickening is the collusion of the GOP in this travesty. I miss Obama.
7
Right-wingers these days are fond of the idea that the really important thing is "common sense," as opposed to elitists with high-falootin' degrees. In other words, an awful lot of people on the right think that stupid is smart and smart is stupid. There is no way this can end well.
6
While the earlier organization with xenophobic views was dubbed, The know-nothings," it was mainly because they were very secretive about their membership and did not divulge the details of their beliefs in public. The name stuck because when the members were asked about the group, their reply could be paraphrased into, "I know nothing about it." The difference today is there is little to no secrecy for the current group of Know-nothings in our country. They shout their vile, racist views very loudly and clearly. They are stirred to cry out by charlatans and mountebanks like Alex Jones, Bannon and Trump. Neo-Nazis are marching in our streets! Though Trump says their are "some very fine people," at these marches, our Fathers died on the battlefields of WWII for freedom all over the world. They would be absolutely amazed and angry. We need to correct the alternative facts being spewed by these people.
4
Most of my Italian relatives literally have no idea that:
#1. They were seen as utterly impossible to Americanize because they were filthy and illiterate
#2. They were seen as utterly incapable of becoming citizens in a republican democracy because they were required to follow a foreign religious leader who had actually written an encyclical declaring "Americanism" a heresy
#3. They were seen as dangerous because some were anarchists and many were connected to the Mafia
#4. More than a few of them came illegally to the US by lying to the inspectors at Ellis Island or simply evading the authorities by coming through Canada
#5. Their own ancestors are the reason tough immigration laws were instituted in the 1920s.
They were every bit as unpromising candidates for American citizenship as those who come today. But ultimately that society believed in itself enough to take a chance on most of them. Too bad their descendants don't believe in America that much.
4
It is what you learn and from whom you learn it that matters. Learning from bigoted TV channels and social media could be called miseducation and it is widespread. This is how a social media addicted, bigoted TV personality gets elected. Why are you surprised?
2
The Know Nothings and the know nothings are winning because of network wars: when Fox News can influence the president's thoughts and actions on a daily and even hourly basis, and when its misinformation and disinformation is lapped up by the Republican party's base because of its by now tribal aversion to facts, you have a time bomb with no one or no institution strong enough to defuse it. One shudders to imagine the predictable Republican lawmakers' collective handwringing and then obsequious shrugs if Mueller's investigation is finally allowed to be brought down. If it happens, look to this Mussolini-style mob boss to lick his lips and double down, for California to make good on its intention to exit the union, and all sorts of similar crazy what-ifs that would only have been fantasies prior to 2016.
2
The Deep Red, Deep South's devotion to anti-science, Jim Crowism, anti-women's right to choose, and of course, their biblical amusement parks where, as the journalist Charlie Pearce described in his book, "Idiot America," creationists must believe "The Flintstones," with stoneagers coexisting with dinosaurs, was a documentary.
What we have is the former Party of Lincoln divided within itself: between the educationally vacuous, and the dispassionate crime syndicate. The former is a group who, when you listen to them in grass roots surveys, are beyond retrieving. They have exited our solar system of reality in favor of empty promises and hateful speechesfrom their new savior, Donald Trump. Had Jesus met The Donald on the campaign trail, he would have repeated the words of W.C.Fields: "Thrown him overboard and let the sharks take care of themselves."
The latter of the GOP groups is in a marriage of convenience with The Donald as if they were two crime families pooling their empires for maximum power. OH! WAIT! That is exactly what they are doing. And they have bamboozled their tiny-brained voters into believing they actually care about anyone but their donor class. With the help of America's only state-run network, Fox News, it is not that hard to betray. disenfranchise, and fool, all of those loyal voters with lies and unfulfilled promises.
Should we wait for the Deep South to demand secession or, should we demand it ourselves. The clock is ticking.
2
A significant number of formerly historically oppressed Irish, Germans voted for Trump enthusiastically supporting 21st Century Know Nothingism.
8
The Know Nothing Party had it's roots in Texas, I believe, and apparently still does. Louie Gohmert and Blake Farenthold being prime examples.
3
Appealing to the rube's ignorance and hate is always a shortcut to power. Trump and many unfit congressional types are using the same playbook to keep their places of power. This is what happens when you elect those unqualified for the position.
1
What is the objective of the 21 Cenruty Know Nothings? It seems clearer as the year has gone by that Mr. Trump wants to undermine our Demoracy. This is totally unacceprable.
2
One of the shining examples of a populist rejection of the "no Nothings" was the decision of the federal government to give large tracts of federal lands to the states which were then to use the funds received from selling these tracts to settlers. The funds received by the states were then to be (and were) used by the states to set up institutions of higher learning. Cornell, University of Wisconsin, MIT, University of Georgia and many many others were founded by these grants. Similar grants could be used today by directing NIH and other government labs funded for drug research to direct their profits to such enterprises instead of syphoning off their work and royalties to patents procured by large drug companies as is done today. But all this requires the transformations of the know nothings into know somethings and that is a lot to ask.
2
It makes you wonder where the conservatives park their brains and consciences when they assume office. They're surely not all Sgt. 'I Know Nothing' Schultz like - somewhere there must be smart, conservative champions who do not suffer fools gladly...like William F. Buckley Jr., articulate thinkers, who can separate petty disagreements from broad strokes in policy concepts - and who can do it without being divisive, destructive or self-annihilating. Why are so many Republicans committing intellectual and political suicide? What are they scared of...losing an election and disappointing their corporate donors or their wealthy/religious benefactors? If that's so - so what? That's the nature of politics - sometimes you win sometimes you don't...but the biggest losers in all of this are the US voters. What terrible damage has been done to them by this President and an acquiescent Congress in such a short space of time.
3
Are you considered a know nothing if you are being continually ignorant?
That is to say you do not want to even process the facts presented to you. You wish to follow your agenda regardless of the consequences to others. ( namely not your supporters )
That is exactly what this President, this administration and ALL republicans ( who are supporting in lock step via their votes )
They know that they are going to be voted out of existence, which is why they are feigning to know nothing now and exact their policies while they still can.
3
I grew up in the northeast corner of the District of Columbia in the fifties. When I was a student at Harvard I lived in a biracial slum. I went into permanent exile in 1968 and moved to Europe, where I saw clean cities for the first time in my life. Patriotic Americans like to repeat over and over again how great America is, or was, but by what criteria do they judge the greatness of any nation? Certainly descendants of slaves might have another opinion. I was persecuted constantly when I was in America just because I am a homosexual. You can read my story in my book What Rough Beast by Robert Dole, published by Austin Macauley in London last year.
2
Call me a prude but I am saddened that our lexicon now so casually includes the vulgar language of tRump and his ilk. Remember the debate at the Times about printing the words of Scaramucci? Now it's just business as usual. As my mother said during the election, "I taught my children not to talk like that, how could I vote for a man who speaks like that?"
#thanksdeplorables
4
Mr. Krugman is one of the people, along with many other Patriots, who has been consistently speaking Truth to (Fake) Power. To expropriate a phrase from the Rush-istas, “Boola, Boola”. I would only add to Mr. Krugman’s perspective, Victor Hugo’s (translated) thought: ‘Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.’
We do not fear the future of Liberty; we welcome her, an immigrant again, into our humble home.
2
The "drag 'em down to our level" mindset reminds me of the old joke about 2 peasants, Ivan and Boris, each of whom owned a goat. Sadly, Ivan's goat became ill and died. However, Ivan found a lamp, and when he rubbed the lamp, a genie appeared. The genie said "Ivan, I can grant you one wish, and it can be anything you want". Ivan looked at her in astonishment and said "Do you really mean that you can kill Boris' goat?".
4
Thank you. Mr. Krugman, for the historical perspective. Reassuring that our country survived a period of governing without intelligence. Not reassuring to know that a civil war followed.
The immigration discussion is particularly confusing. America is a country of immigrants. It’s a fundamental American principal to be a refuge from persecution and economic hardship. What’s this about determining which immigrants will contribute the most?! Who would determine this? It is a misguided and arrogant concept. We have plenty of citizens with PhDs, etc. (and why would educated Europeans want to become American citizens, especially since Americans elected a TV reality show host as president). How about offering citizenship to people who are truly in need and appreciate opportunity and freedom? That is the engine for economic growth and an engaged, diverse, vibrant population.
2
Gore and Clinton both won the popular vote and carried counties that generated
56% and 64% of GDP, respectively, yet lost elections. These facts demonstrate two things- that cities have always been centers of commerce, innovation and power, and are supported by middle class populations that always outnumber those who hold the capital, and that the electoral college is doing what it was designed to do, which is protect the minority against the majority. Too bad that the minority today wants authoritarian rule and is the party of racists. The Founders would recognize it. Probably the Founders would not have wanted it protected.
2
Yeah, we need policies to spread the wealth & whatnot, but what you really needed was to win the presidency.
Fact-based political realities aside, can we not finally agree that we would have been better off if a Democrat/progressive had achieved office, 'even' if that was Bernie?
Can we agree that Bernie was a better option than Trump, & that he actually could have beaten him in the outer-borough street-brawl that was the general?
And can we also agree that single-payer & free basic college was the way to both help the bottom & educate the prols?
And can we now agree, as Dodd-Frank & financial regulation is now on the skids, that patrolling the Banksters, moving against pay-to-play corruption via pacs per Citizens united, etc were proper main platform planks to have stood on?
None of these well-informed cerebralisms about, & indictments of, the redstatist repeat of the know/no/Know-Nothings much matter if you continue to back candidates who don't know the fight.
You won't win with this smart analysis unless you win elections, & with this electorate that means getting into the brawl, take no prisoners, rile the base, inspire the troops, get out the vote.
Obama knew that, Bernie knew that, your candidate had, for whatever made-up reasons, way too much baggage & not enough Chutzpah to convince those workers stuck in marginal redstates with a candidate who could out-shout, out-lie & out-insult your coddled coastal cohort.
To win this fight, embrace your fighters.
3
This column explains why Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress love the poorly educated. They're easily played and readily believe that charlatans like Donald Trump can turn the clock back and make America the dominant economic power that it was in the 50's and 60's.
Sadly, we had an opportunity to put our nation back on track by getting our fiscal house in order and prudently investing in our future. But Donald Trump had a better idea and gleefully signed a tax cut bill that will mostly line the pockets the wealthiest in America, such as himself, and leave the rest of us with an additional $11 trillion of debt over the next 10 years.
Someone needs to ask Trump how a $30 trillion plus debt by the end of fiscal year 2027 is supposed to make America great again???
3
Trump conned almost half the voters into believing they were going to get sometthing that only he could deliver: better health, better incomes, control of the financial industry ( ? Carried interest ) , no more Muslims and no more Mexicans. He hasnt delivered and on health care and incomes he has done the opposite. After all when almost half the people couldn't meet a $400 emergency over a two week period who are they going to vote for ? The person who says they can fix it tomorrow or the person who says that change takes time ? Now it appears that about 12-15% of the conned have wizened up so maybe the midterms will be helpful. If the Dems get back the marginal tax rate
should refiect what's been stolen and the monies redistributed to the middle class to whom it was promised.
3
And they hysteria continues... "the party that currently controls all three branches of the federal government is increasingly for bigotry and against education." No, they're not and the never-ending hyperbole of Krugman and left leaning commentators just chips away at any chance the Democrats will take back the House. These sort of Op-Eds are great fodder for the Democratic base and, I suppose, reflect the market-driven decisions taken by the Times over the last few years. However, the vast majority of America is exhausted by the primal scream of the left that lost in 2016 and unless the Democrats starting offering up reasonable responses and honest leadership--and stop smugly calling the other side names all the time--we could be in for a long stretch of Republican federal government.
1
Politics are the new race relations. That is, people dislike and stigmatize people more on their politics than on their superficial characteristics. Prof. K is obviously a very educated man, but as susceptible to partisan thinking as anyone and has all the tunnel vision, bias, one-sided arguments and tactics (like hyperbole and character assassination) that it implies. I'm glad he wrote, basically, all Rs are "no-nothings" or worse - meaning bigots, because that is what he thinks and it might as well be said directly. I'm sure lots of readers here would agree, but I know many Rs and Ds and find that most do not dislike others because of their superficial characteristics, like ethnicity, but despise others because they disagree on policy issues. Of course, there are actual bigots on both sides, not that either can see it except in their adversaries.
I do think the Democratic bogey-man, Trump, is a little bigoted, but not more so than a lot of people his age and not even remotely close to as much as how the media portrays him. And though I don't think much of him, the energy and hysteria spent in denigrating and trying to unseat him is greater than almost anyone spends in disparaging racial or ethnic groups. In a world of groups that beg to be victimized, he is a one-man pinata. But, I don't think he is any more bigoted than Obama, who identified, for whatever reasons, as black and seemed to side reflexively in arguments between ethnicities with the minority.
It's worth pointing out that the Know-Nothings were a key part of the coalition that founded the Republican party in the 1850s.
2
After this because of this just not the other stuff before this because I don't like that stuff.
" More likely, however, you’re suggesting that said person is willfully ignorant, someone who rejects facts that might conflict with his or her prejudices."
That fits the Democrats and the Left perfectly.
They deny science. That's in fact their biggest fault.
They deny that a large fraction a human being's abilities and limits are determined by their DNA, and that the differences vary by the very real concept of physical race. That is, genotype determines phenotype.
The overlap is large, and is the basis for their screams. But the standard deviations around the mean for each characteristic, such as IQ, height,
speed in running a marathon, etc. are such that when such a character
matters most (such as winning a Nobel Prize in Physics or a Field Medal, starting in the NBA, etc.) there is a very strong relation to race.
Until the Democrats admit this, they can't get out of the starting gate
except by their usual bullying. Their screaming and bullying is effective on a substantial fraction of people.
Republicans are smart enough to see past the Climate Change hoax.
That is, they see that, quite independent of the science involved, they see that the Paris Pact could not have had any significant effect, because the Chinese and Indians (and probably Indonesians too) would simply ignore it.
In other words, Republicans believe in reality, Democrats believe in a make-believe world. We need to educate people to see the truth rather than the Left-wing hoaxes.
Mr Krugman is wrong about America's having led in universal public education or great universities. We were far behind Sweden in the first and Germany in the second, although I take his larger point that good education is generally good, period (even if German university graduates proved to be more enthusiastic nazis than the German workers).
History is a tricky muse to invoke becuase what we imbibe as history is often wildly distorted.
One would not expect Trump to know anything about it, but Sweden (which included Norway until 1905) was the poorest country in Europe in the 1840s even if the best-educated. The peasants ate bark in the spring after the food ran out. A place had to be miserable for emigration to North Dakota to appear desirable. The Scandinavians who had lived in villages were so depressed living alone in the long winters that each spring parties of men were organized to drive from cabin to cabin to pull out the suicides.
And it is no fluke that the medical term for one of the most frightening diseases, leprosy, is named for Hansen, a Norwegian doctor. Leprosy is preeminently a disease of poverty and was common in Norway 150 years ago.
2
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely."
Yes, we do. Which made your slamming of Bernie so difficult to comprehend.
1
Another great piece, Mr Krugman! Thank you. The know-nothings will never prevail with the likes of you and others continuing the battle to confront their ignorance at every turn. The Know-Nothings of the 19th century turned violent, killing Catholics causing others to hide out in fear for extended periods of time. The know-nothings of the Trump brigade have turned violent in Charlottesville and elsewhere, and their goal is to kill ideas and free thinking. You and those like you will see to it, however, that we do not have to hide!
Dr. Krugman, whose column mostly centers on the historical facts about the benefit of higher education & the value that immigrants bring with them to our country. Without both, The United States would not have become the Great Nation it is (or was before the current crop of "leaders" in Washington).
There is another important point Dr. Krugman makes, without expounding on it, when discussing Enrico Moretti's 2012 book, "The New Geography of Jobs," "about the growing divergence of regional fortunes within the United States. Until around 1980, America seemed on the path toward broadly spread prosperity, with poor regions like the Deep South rapidly catching up with the rest. Since then, however, the gaps have widened again, with incomes in some parts of the nation surging while other parts fall behind."
Since the election of Ronald Reagan as president & the advancing the "Trickle-Down Theory" (aka Voodoo Economics) as government policy, we have seen real growth among the middle class & working class poor fall behind the upper classes as wealth became more & more consolidated in the hands of the super-rich.
This is a factor which cannot be ignored. The recent "Tax Reform" bill passed by the GOP dominated Congress has institutionalized this growing disparity.
One of the most insidious outcomes of this is there is no incentive for businesses & investors to make long term commitments towards growth, which in turn advances protracted fighting between working people for what's left.
4
Has Mr. Krugman has written this column as an economic policy know-nothing? The name of the Know-Nothing comes from the secretive nature of the movement, a member was to respond that “I know nothing” about the movement to outsiders; not the willful ignorance of a ‘know nothing.”
45 wants to take away lotteries, permanent admission on “temporary” visas, chain migration (being qualified to be an American based on who family members had a certain degree of progenerative sex with), and so forth. What he wants to institute is skills based immigration, like Canada’s, here’s a version: https://nyti.ms/2vnARDh
NYT: “Yet when it comes to immigration, Canada’s policies are…ruthlessly rational, which is why Canada now claims the world’s most prosperous and successful immigrant population.” https://nyti.ms/2tjFj8I
Had this system been in place the ethnic and religious prejudices Krugman cites might not have been reiterated with every new generation. Surely, this is not the American Way we want to pass on to our children? By changing to a skill based test, a most egalitarian and objective entrée to American society, we can find common ground with all the immigrants, they worked to become American and participate in the American Dream as we worked hard to maintain the American Dream. Isn’t this a better than we found it plan #MAGA? Perhaps all those future highly skilled immigrants will move to red states which are traditionally more favorable to business and vote them blue? Let’s see.
If Krugman means that Trump is threatening the "flexible labor force" of some equivalent of slavery that American has had for most of its history (Indentured servitude in the North, black slavery in the South, then the shame of immigrant below living wage exploitation since the mid 1800's) then Krugman is correct that Trump is threatening what made our 1% GREAT. I and many other Americans who have ancestors who fought in the Civil War and in WWII against Fascism and in the Cold War against the Gulag murderers of millions and who supported the civil rights movement and hired blacks and minorities decades before this became "cool' are now ready to give up on the "benefits" of having a slave class of 10's of millions of usually illiterate immigrants who largely benefit our 3% business owner nobility and those wealthy enough to hire slavishly 'compliant' house servants and nannies.
Any reading of English and later American Protestants' attitudes toward the Irish is very reminiscent of American attitudes towards Blacks. The fear of the Germans was they were culturally unable to live in a democratic free country. Fortunately for America both views were rejected.
5
Krugman knows we have a problem, but it's the sufferers of TDS and the radical, terrorist left-wing groups that are the biggest threat we face as a nation. We are supposed to be able to have a civil discussion about our differences without fear of being attacked or killed for our views.
Americans might be ignorant of some things, but here's what I think they know. While the increasing ease with which American companies can recruit top talent from around the world and export jobs to other countries might be a boon for their bottom line, and the economy, Americans are competing for jobs at American companies with people from across the globe, and, this not being Lake Wobegon, we can't all be above average. They know we can't all compete with the best and brightest from all across the globe, and what they're experiencing is wage erosion and job insecurity. They like the fact that Donald Trump is seemingly successful without being book smart or well spoken.
Republicans have sold them the big lie that what is making us uncompetetive is excessive taxation, excessive gov't regulation and interference and excessively open borders. This is what they know.
4
Most of the members of the Know-Nothing Party in the early 1850s went on to join the newly-formed Republican Party in 1854.
2
"Germans...the Irish in particular, were portrayed as drunken criminals if not subhuman....subversives: Catholics whose first loyalty was to the pope. A few decades later...Italians, Jews and many other peoples — inspired similar prejudice."
Who's left to be prejudiced? Was it Mayflower Puritans?--morphed into Congregationalists--the essential "other phobics" (Catholic, Jew, Black) much like the KKK, Trump and Trumpies.
Well--there were also native Americans! But their fears were hardly phobias. Phobias are real fears--but without real danger. They "project" fake/false danger onto reality--feeling as if it were dangerous--thus acro, hydro, homo, xeno and all the others, including gyno.
Know-somethings may realize their (often debilitating) phobias, and work to overcome them. Know-nothings, by contrast, build their worlds around them--private and public debilitated, shrunken worlds--phobias spreading like a contagions.
There is also "future-phobia" a variation on "Future-Shock"--fearing change--political, economic, cultural---especially knowledge based due to technological and more broadly academic based change--all due to critical thinking, undermining prejudice--but also making many traditional values obsolete.
No wonder the demographic stats: "counties carried by Hillary Clinton ...account for a remarkable 64 percent of U.S. G.D.P., almost twice as much as Trump counties.
Trump/Trumpie phobics could make America great again--only by Time Travel.
2
Know-Nothing and know-nothing really go hand-in-hand. It's not merely a matter of academic knowledge, but personal perspective. Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, and various other conjured-up boogeymen don't seem much like boogeymen when you actually know some as real people.
3
Disingenuous not to address the elephant in the room, illegal v. legal immigration.
2
Any and all opinions formed by liberals during this term are going to be extremely harmful in the long run. You lost, and you're going to destroy progressive ideas in favor of a now totally discredited and defunct liberalism.
The fact is that Silicon Valley and lower Manhattan are destroying the country. They definitely need to be ripped down in order to help others build.
In this article, Obama desperately tried to renew his dumb views on trade:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/world/africa/obama-on-chinas-turf-pre...
Why are they dumb? Because within the fight as it exists, China is a far better partner for what the African governments are trying to achieve. The old US imperialistic trade model is successfully being used to destroy our power. We're going to lose on this front. You're all still fighting on the wrong front of total economic gain. The right front is one that needs to dominate the US progressive system, and it is about showing a better, more balanced system for citizens.
And another total blunder of the Democrats is explained by this:
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/15/opinions/daca-shithole-immigration-reform-...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. never (that I'm aware of) gave speeches labeling people racist. It is one thing for people to make this judgement in small conversations, but to go all out publicly with name calling will destroy your party for good. Maybe that's a good thing.
Keep calm, and VOTE BLUE.
4
While I'm no student of history, the date written at the bottom of the ideal Know Nothing portrait (November 9, 1859) led me to read up a bit on KNs. This anti-ethnic party was effectively thankfully dissolved by the election of 1860; therefore the photo is not circa 1864. The contemporaneous other branch of the bigot tree that led to the US Civil War hopefully won't be recapitulated when the current reincarnation of know-nothingness is relegated to the history books.
2
There is only one credible reason that the right wing powers allow and enable this backward thinking: pure and simple greed.
3
Didn’t Chris Rock have a routine about people who love NOT knowing things? Was it conservatives? I can’t remember...
1
When Tide has to come out with an official statement asking people NOT to eat their products, you know your country's in trouble.
5
Not all change is for the good, but change will occur like it or not, so best make friends with change lest you earn yourself a miserable life.
At every step of this country's history emigration has brought change. Even American Indians migrated from what is now Alaska and Canada to what is now Texas and New Mexico. Plains Indians were being shoved aside by other tribes long before the White Eyed hordes of Europeans showed up.
So when people these days complain of immigration, at what point do they want to halt that change? The point at which they or their family arrived, no doubt. Hypocrisy, much?
2
the Irish that arrived during the 1800's to me are most responsible for my GREAT public education i received. if they had not established the parochial system of schools for their own children, where would we be. the Irish when they were new saw the lack of real education and took care of their tribe. protestants an whatever they called themselves then saw the Irish as dangerous with real education so they then had to catch up. yes Mr Krugman today the dumbing down of the education for the last 30 years has shown the result to be more H1B visas cause our students are not learning the correct skills for the future. yes we are in deep doo doo. not as bad as the doo doo in the president's brain but the same results can be seen and our nation's future is somewhat in doubt at the current moment.
2
We have been reading columns like Mr. Krugman’s—and those of legions of progressive writers—for over a year now. And here we are. A regressive tax bill, a chaotic foreign policy, attacks on CHIP and the ACA, hate, corruption and lies pouring forth from Washington in a torrent of raw sewage. Where will we be after another year’s’ worth of newspaper columns and cable news mud-wrestling panels? Perhaps it is true that for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good people to expend their energies writing thousands of newspaper columns.
Please Paul, we like to call it viewpoint diversity.
Clearly immigration is the secret of the USs success. The demonization of Mexicans as dangerous murderous drug smugglers who abuse the USs public services is a bad reverse image of reality. The USs failed drug war has created the dangerous growth of the Mexican drug cartels. It has been said these cartels won the Cold War not the US or Russia. All the agricultural work done by Mexican illegals who were recruited and encouraged to come to the US by agribusinesses. The fact that the Mexicans pay lots of taxes and get nothing except a police dragnet to send them back.
2
I am just surprised that Krugman doesn't bring Trump's mother (poor thing) and the Norwegians into this discussion. Trump's mother was an Irish immigrant and as Krugman rightly states, her country-people were not wanted in this country. If Trump read or were a truly educated person, he might have an inkling of this. Being half-Norwegian in ancestry, I noted with amusement his desire to bring more Norwegians here. Why would they leave Norway? They have it much better than we do. I was just there. But hello! In Wisconsin, Norwegians were considered the dregs (under Germans, English, etc.) and had to do all the low-level jobs until they finally worked their way to become regular Americans. My grandmother and father spoke Norwegian even though they were second-generation but preferred their children to speak English. And by the way, the number of non-white Norwegians is increasing in leaps and bounds. If Trump traveled (in addition to reading), he might realize his white Utopia does not exist, nor should it.
7
Nov. 2016: "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never."
Jan 2018: Dow hits 26,000 for first time!
1
Good column, but I wouldn’t be so quick to conflate opposition to climate science with opposition to changing policy or the culture based on some of the work being done in the humanities and social sciences departments.
I often get the idea when people cite some of that scholarship, in argument, that the ideas depend in part on broad poorly defined terms that are not used in their ordinary sense. That sort of thing leads to passing off an idea that is not well-supported by the facts and by sound analysis as expert opinion. This in turn makes it likely that many people will sense something is wrong but find it difficult to identify and say just what the problem is.
There’s also the question of whether it’s necessary or useful to correlate characteristics, more or less immutably, with race or gender. Talking about the consequences of white supremacy or of being racialized as white in America is one thing. Conjoining entitlement and privilege with race and gender is a seemingly similar but quite different thing. With the latter, but not the former, one is likely to find oneself telling working class white guys who are struggling just how easy they’ve had it, or how privileged they are compared to someone with a college degree and a white collar job making more money.
Conservatives in the Republican Party circa 1960 were either business focused or religion focused, but they were not anti-modern nuts like the conservatives who dominate the Party, today. They had worked hard and smart, they were professionals or corporate managers or small business owners who trusted in conventional and practical ways of thinking, and they considered higher education a means to a prosperous future. It was not until the Party found so many of it's critics were college educated that this attitude of animosity towards knowledge and science began to really become significant. Part of it was the increasing political participation of evangelicals who for most of the previous two hundred years considered secular government to be un-Godly and resisted participating in it. In addition, higher education and science contradicted religious doctrines which predated the Enlightenment, to which they responded with a rejection of all such notions. Part of it was the residual parochialism of segregationists who resented everything that followed from the Civil War, including the increasing strength of democratic institutions which guaranteed the rights of all, including minorities. Race still was important to these constituents, and whites remained the superior of the races, but science had already begun to disprove these ideas. The bottom line is that science and reason have become the enemies of the belief systems held by right wingers so they reject science and reason.
2
Republican extremists truly hate being challenged on their alternative facts. So they are pushing to bring in immigrants with advanced degrees from third world countries who are more likely to come from the wealthy elite and share the ideals of the privileged class.
Like the H1b visas this GOP immigration change will also push against wages for top earners exacerbating the divide between average Americans and the very rich.
2
"Remarkably, a clear majority of Republicans now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on America."
This is a stunning, shocking and deeply disturbing statement.
7
THe Know Nothing Party was also called the American Party (not Make America Great Again).it's strength was to be anti many things, including recent immigrants and various minorities. After a. brief, dramatic rise, it soon collapsed and, with the Whigs, morphed into the nascent Republican Party. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. Sadly, his once-noble party has apparently returned to its Know Nothing roots. LIncoln would be weeping at the thought of Trump as president.
2
This is an editorial many NY Times readers will find comfortable and easy to agree with. But as an independent in a heavily Republican-dominated state, I fear the tone of this article is precisely what feeds into so many conservatives rejecting more progressive politics. When the other option is constantly calling you uneducated, misinformed, or a blind follower, what incentive do you have to meet them in the middle? So many intelligent and well-intentioned, moderate conservatives are turned off by the elitest superiority complex that characterize political discourse on the left. The common ground between the extremes of the American political landscape needs to be bridged by understanding and a recognition of the greatness that can be brought in.
After the election of 2016 and the humble pie that it served the Democratic Party, I hoped to see a little more reflection and introspection and less of the constant refrain "all those poor simpletons just don't know any better".
4
"Until around 1980, America seemed on the path toward broadly spread prosperity, with poor regions like the Deep South rapidly catching up with the rest. Since then, however, the gaps have widened again..."
Gee, what happened in 1980? Oh yes, Saint Ronald Reagan became president...
6
Will 64% of the GNP allow the other 36% to run the country? Will the 64% focus resources and take over?
The emphasis now should be on what to do after the 36% go home. Policies that benefit the nation, such as ACA medical insurance, assisting education by outright funding of 2 year junior colleges and financially assisting 4 year undergraduate schools, enacting a path to citizenship for immigrants, not deporting law-abiding people, supporting family unification as an immigration priority, re-enacting the Voting Rights Act, making partisan gerrymandering illegal, convicting people who are guilty of conspiring with a foreign state to influence an election by illegal means, appointing judges who will follow the law and allow all races to vote, requiring elections to allow early voting, voting on weekends as well as work days, funding the government with taxes to build infrastructure, adequately funding food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security - these are a few of the things that should be done in the first 6 months after the 36% are swept out of office.
Oh, and convict Donald Trump of the crimes he has committed, money laundering, conspiracy to violate electronic privacy, conspiracy to violate civil rights, and obstruction of justice.
And don't expect them to go quietly just because the 64% elect a new Congress. Expect obstruction and conflict from the criminal defendants in the West Wing and from the fiction writers at Fox News.
3
the real backers of the Republican Part - their very own "deep state" of ultra wealthy and ultra selfish donors - are good at counting more than just money. they can see that their party represents the interests of what amounts to only a handful of voters (some say no more than. about 400 or 500 wealthy families).
to have any hope of winning elections, even in wealthy enclaves, they see they have to attract masses of people who will vote against their own interests. they go after the lowest hanging fruit, the most easily persuaded, the ignorant, the superstitious, those warped by hatreds and fear:
our know nothing Republican voters. there's one born every minute.
3
Jobs, family here, fleeing civil wars, or violence related to drugs and gangs, educational opportunities, etc., America has become a place of mostly illegal immigration, and birth rite children, over the last 40 years. This happened with three types of people, those who intentionally overstay their Visa, who number in the millions, those who come here to give birth to allow their children to be citizens, especially Hispanics, and Asians, and those who come illegally one way or the other. This accelerated for a number of reasons, both from where these people were leaving, and what the economic situation was here at the time, and the ease at which one could come over the border, especially the southern border. Businesses depended on a work force that was steady, low paid, and replaceable, but they didn't have to deal with the housing crisis, educational crowding, lack of adequate health access, etc. In other words, millions more people every year, most who didn't speak English, needed government services and interpreters, put strains on local governments. The costs, resulted in raised taxes, in cities, counties(which raised the property taxes for local school districts), and states. The politicians in Washington, could both applaud and question all of this, as they heard from both businesses and local and state governments, they needed to send billions back to the states. In 1986, Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million, Congress failed to reform immigration, and here we are!
2
Re: "remarkable estrangement between modern conservatives and highly educated Americans, especially but not only college faculty."
Let's have a look at the numbers (Politics in US Academia)
Field of Study % of Conservatives
Political Science 2%
Physics 11%
Economics 39%
Indeed, only one professio harboured more conservatives then economy
Maybe we should just declare economists know nothings in res politica , as even Mr. Krugman postulated that "Trump is Right on Economics" during the Primaries.
Perhaps unaware that counts in politics, in the word of B.C. "It's the economy stupid" Mr. Krugman, who disparaged Trump otherwise, contributed to the mess we have now. He could run with the endorsement of his economics by a Nobel Memorial Prize winner.
For more data see:
Rothman, S., L. Lichter, and N. Nevitte. 2005. “Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty.” The Forum 3: 1. Available at www.cwu.edu/~manwellerm/academic%20bias.pdf.
Prof. Krugman conflates the two issues of immigration and education while laboring under the false assumption that Americans cannot or will not engage in technical labor and ascribing the worst motivations to those who disagree with him.
Conditions in the United States are very different today than they were in the 1850's. There is no more frontier. We are chronically short of water in the west. There is a housing crisis in our major cities. Existing home owners, acting through city councils and county planning commissions, will not permit the construction of new rental housing. And most people prefer the low density and healthful green space of suburban environments to the concrete jungle of cities.
While America was built by immigrants, the country is now full. And it is possible to acknowledge our current reality without feeling any prejudice against any citizen of any foreign land.
3
Thank you for a thoughtful and specific comment and much of what you say is true (housing shortages, ridiculous rents/mortgages), especially in California. But you can't deny the anti-intellectual streak in modern conservatism, evidenced by the lack of education spending in the most conservative states like Kansas and Oklahoma, where I grew up.
And the country is far from full. Drive from Tulsa to LA and you'll see we still have plenty of room.
2
America is nowhere near full. We should be able to easily double our population in the next century without overcrowding.
This problem is uniquely Silicon Valley's problem. Silicon Valley (a misnomer today -- it should be called Software Valley) needs its financial capital moved to smaller cities. Its patents need to be invalidated, its offshoring ended, and all of it needs to be forced federally. Either that or New California should take its place in the union and the valley left to fall into the ocean.
Hillary won more than a "narrow margin" of the popular vote. She swamped Trump with almost 3 million votes.
7
Here in the Bay Area (Silicon Valley) we are seeing the impact of Trump's pre-fascism and Republican Know-Nothings and anti-science and anti-education. Many of the best and brightest, especially from China, but also from India and South Korea, and finally, even a few from France and Germany long since established here with American Citizenship and sometimes American born wives and children are going to China, India, So. Korea, Europe. Why? If you can make your living anywhere in the world, why stay where you are not wanted? Specifically, for Chinese, if you have to chose between the ameliorating dictatorship of China, and the worsening one of the US, and the corruption crackdown in China vs. the corruption banquet run by Trump, the contempt of education now showing in the US vs the great value given in China, the hatred of science by the ruling junta in the US vs the science based policy-making in China--why stay in the US?
Of course the international companies who are at least nominally US based today are now doing most, or all of their expansion abroad. The Republican tax law makes expansion off-shore more profitable than doing so here, even if all else is equal.
The economic boom of the past 30 years was US dominated and driven (despite not doing much for most of the country or population). Republican attitudes and policies now threaten to put an aggressive hard stop to this--and replace it with what? Money laundering?
Know-nothing and bigotry is a huge threat.
10
I certainly agree with Krugman's general criticism of GOPers. But I strongly disagree with the US' de facto open borders policy on immigration.
The immigrants who boost our nation's technology and GDP--those that work at universities or in high positions at technology companies, like Elon Musk, are a tiny fraction of the total, who don't make up for the fiscal cost of mass immigration to the US.
http://cis.org/NAS-Study-Workers-and-Taxpayers-Lose-Businesses-Benefit
And too much immigration is what put Trump in the White House. Immigration was his signature issue.
2
The "least racist person you know", "the smartest", the biggest, the longest, the ...est -- or "least ... ever". The Prez's vocabulary is full of superlatives which, however, cannot be measured by any metric. The Germans once knew (and know again) that "Eigenlob stinkt" (self-praise stinks). Most continental and British Europeans know how to comport themselves, it's only "our" president (they all belong in 'scare quotes') who lives in quarantine, or more like Rip van Winkle; the difference: RvW woke up after 20 years and learned something, Donald John Trump knows nothing and wishes to not know anything except the total of all his profits. Perhaps Lindsey Graham will let him know that he has to take his kids out of the room when Trump speaks on TV. How much lower can we go?
5
I am a proud graduate of James Madison H.S. in Brooklyn, and the lintel spanning the school's main entrance bears the following quote: "Education is the true foundation of civil liberty." I think Madison's observation says it all when it comes to why conservatives feel so threatened by higher education.
12
All very correct and nicely put! Now let me re-sate it in simple verifiable (by the election) terms...
The GOP is run by, funded by and supported by people (I will be generous) people who hate any non-white, non-protestant, non-reactionary person who disagrees with their particular prejudice.
And after seeing a "blackman in the whitehouse" they knelt before the Burning Cross and swore to destroy America For All....and too support only America for themselves.
Really quite simple when you take out all the liberal, political correctness.
7
I think this absolutely rings true. The question is not what is motivating the leaders of that party, but what would motivate the followers of that party to reject it, and I seriously doubt the current public discourse on this is going to do that. You can't ever unite a country around the negative, ridiculous name-calling and stereotyping of white, protestant working people.
There's only one media outlet doing a proper job of news reporting today, and it is:
CBS news.
MSNBC, CNN broadcast, the NYT, and every other 'reactionary' opinion cesspools are doing far more harm than good at this time.
Nobody doing proper new reporting should be calling people racists. All they should do is print the quote and let the people form their own opinions.
The vast majority of voters in both parties are in favor of a legislated DACA program. But if the public discourse is dominated by advertising-based ratings and subscriptions to echo chambers, no progress will happen.
The press is not doing a good job of standing up for good journalism. If they were they'd be criticizing their own employers, and that seems unlikely given the state of employer/employee rights.
1
To Stu Freeman: Former Secretary of State James Baker once famously remarked "F" the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway."
Therefore it's safe to assume that Jews have on the receiving end of vulgar remarks too.
1
My thoughts? Sadness dominates. I live in Africa. Happily all educated Africans I chat with just nod wisely when I mention how sorry I am about that 'moron'. I dont need to say more, they know whom I mean.
Yet fear of the unknown unknowns dominate my thoughts as I wonder how the many uneducated Africans in the slums will react. Most believe it or not are decent. But the 'moron' will give a boost to recruitment to the forces of darkness whose names I shall not mention. Their violence and disrespect for human rights is horrible.
So sad that a US President indirectly contributes to all that. Hopefully, thanks to people like Paul, the US nightmare will end soon as decent Americans vote out, in 2018, the current American nightmare.
6
The modern know-nothings want to restore the Old South writ large.
At the top, the planter class, living well off the labor of their slaves or, later, Black tenant farmers. They have a monopoly on wealth and education.
In the middle, the poor whites just getting by, at best, and mainly uneducated. But they support the planters because the planters give them Jim Crow.
At the bottom, the voiceless Blacks.
Just substitute "plutocrats" for planters, and you have the "new" system.
8
Well, anti-Catholic bigotry certainly remains in style.
5
This is the modern RepubliKlan party. A four year old knows more about science than many of the Klan's members of Congress, never mind the constituents who share their ignorance and their racism. But by lying and cheating at the polls, they may hold onto their majorities in Congress thanks to the blind loyalty of their Klan members.
5
Paul, the title of your book, The Conscience of a Liberal, is now obsolete. The terms progressive, liberal and conservative have no meaning today. You and Democrats have to abandon calling reasonable, centrist policies "progressive." They are not.
As Frank Bruni finally put it, today's Democrats are, for the most part, moderate right and more fiscally conservative than today's Republicans. That's a fact! Start talking like that. If Democrats don't get their messaging together and listen to what Frank Bruni and others (like me) are saying, they don't have a prayer of taking the Senate, if they ever had one. And, they could easily snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the House. EASILY!!!
2
Once again Mr Krugman gets to the heart of the matter in a very clear and concise way. The GOP and hard right cannot win on the facts - so they go to war against truth, justice and the American way.
4
Let us not forget the efforts of Betsy DeVos to damage quality education in America: by diverting taxpayer dollars from public schools to voucher and religious schools; by eliminating accountability of for-profit schools; and by defaming the efforts of public school teachers. This is also part of the strategy.
7
Krugman is at it again. Trying to divide American counties and regions between Clinton and Trump counties. So is the 3%+ GDP that Trump's economy is producing only helping the Trump counties? Krugman has been so wrong on his rosy economic predictions when Obama was President to the doom and gloom predictions of Trumps economy that many are now considering him the know nothing economist.
1
Hmm. A "no nothing economist" who is a recipient of a Nobel Prize in economics.
Or, is it more that you are a die-hard supporter of the No Nothing party and will attempt to discredit those who would dare question your belief in what is normal behavior?
3
I also fear the know nothings in the electorate; many just not interested, or too busy with other priorities.
Unfortunately these people don't seem to realize that what happens at the ballot box has a huge and direct impact on the lives of every American as well as people around the world.
Democracy isn't to be taken for granted as we now see at home as our protections are being rolled back daily, and war mongering button pushing is being volleyed around all too cavalierly.
Other countries too, are seeing their democracies rolled back as authoritarians muscle and bully their way to power.
A healthy democracy requires a healthy, educated and well informed electorate...
In this country being informed is free for the taking, but too few take advantage of this great freedom.
Additionally this wonderful freedom is being handicapped by the war for eyeballs and advertising dollars on the internet, making tech companies the richest in the world.
it's time to return many of those tech billions to clean up the dangerous mess that internet greed has been made around the world.
4
of course, not all current "know nothings" actually know nothing. consider the highly educated republican members of congress, including those who for personal gain defend pres. trump's credibility, thereby debasing themselves. also consider the highly educated very wealthy people who simply oppose paying taxes or having their enterprises regulated by government.
in other words, those who motivate and create the know nothings (also consider those connected with fox news) are knowingly responsible for spreading ignorance for self-gain, to the detriment of our country's future. our hope is that, when the political tide turns, those who fall into the category of "intentional promotion of ignorance" will be required to reimburse us all--through significantly higher tax and related payments, of course, but also through loss of control of their economic power, generally.
in other words, when the time for payback comes, it will come like a mountainslide. or a mudslide.
4
"counties carried by Hillary Clinton, who won only a narrow majority of the popular vote, account for a remarkable 64 percent of U.S. G.D.P., almost twice as much as Trump counties."
I can hear the 45er's now: "they left us behind. THEY took our jobs. THEY need to give us jobs and convert some of that GDP to us. THEY need to do it, not us. WE will vote for anyone that will say they will give us back the abandoned factories and get rid of the people, the undeserving, who took OUR jobs. ".
When in the world did relying on someone else to give you your livelihood become a thing? Conservatives I knew got off their great behinds and went to find work, even moving, or to change their circumstances by trade or education. Instant gratification was never a conservative value. This is not Conservatism, this is freeloading. this is dependency. This is not "Life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness", this is, in an odd way, SOCIALISM. Ha. Go figure.
4
Great and succinct summary. But as a liberal elite snob (aka. a college graduate), I find it hard to believe that the know-nothings will prevail, simply because the folks who live in the fact-based world will be more successful in the long run. Reality eventually strikes back. It is just a question of how much damage will be done in the meantime and how much will it cost to undo. Ignoring climate chance could turn out to be very damaging and expensive, and we all will have to bear the cost.
3
disagree.
reason: success of religion, fear over common sense.
don't hold your breath. old habits die hard.
Yes, it was a poorly phrased and ill advised statement for the President to make, but it's not worthy of this extensive level of outrage. We need to set the grandstanding aside and actually need to forge solutions on immigration. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and take an approach that drops the entire moral and emotional angle (stop preaching from a soapbox)...and instead emphasizes both border security, reforms to the visa process and enforcement, and getting people to pay into the system.
Also...Democrats look silly by pushing DACA to the forefront so much. Yes DACA needs to be addressed, but it's one small piece of larger reforms that need to take place on immigration. Plus, from an optics point of view, it makes it seem like Democrats are prioritizing DACA over everyone else (including US citizens).
2
The truth has a liberal bias. Yes...yes it does. As a liberal, I follow the truth. I follow the truth regardless of the opinions of those on the right...or the left. On occasion, conservatives manage to hit on the truth and stay there as long as no leftists are around to scare them. Fairly often, the left becomes dissatisfied with the truth and chases after fairy tales. When those liberals in the middle attempt to bring them back to reality, they become irate. And when the leftists are becoming less rational, the alt-right is claiming the leftists are becoming more liberal. NO. No they are not. As usual, the alt-right is completely wrong...and proud of it.
The way the brain works...if we associate with people who agree with us...we will be pulled towards those with the most radical views. That works on the right and the left. If there is no one in your circle to push back against radical viewpoints, it's all too easy for everyone to just follow the radical leadership. So, question authority. In particular, question authority that you generally agree with. Question YOUR leaders...stop rationalizing that "at least they're better than the other side". That's not good enough. That's not good enough even if your viewpoint wasn't biased, but it almost assuredly is.
Get your own house in order is good advice, especially if it's your house that is running things. The republicans insist that government doesn't work. And when they are in charge, they ensure government failure.
2
Perhaps we need a national education curriculum, so that we all agree that facts (not alternative facts) have importance, and so that the country finally starts respecting science and engineering.
2
History teaches us that the chickens always come home to roost-"that what you reap is what you sow". Lets look at a couple of examples. In the 15 th century Spain was predominant throughout the world. Queen Isabella decided on religious purity and through the Spanish Inquisition extirpated all non believers from Spain. The result was Spain rapidly becoming a second rate power and country ever since.
And then there is Mr. Hitler with his ideas of racial superiority and cleansing which destroyed Germany and almost the whole world.
And then there is Donald Trump who lives in a fantastic bubble. If his ideas become widespread and the law of the land then we can expect the same fate.
A loss of scientific, artistic, business and yes, military greatness which our children and grandchildren will inherit.
5
The know nothings are also our fellow Americans who see nothing wrong with a con man like Trump and his Republican hypocritical stooges.
6
The "know nothings" are the folks who run and vote for the repulsives. It seems that their big push is to dumb down their constituents so that they never realize how they have been had. It's easier to herd dummies than it is smart folks. Isn't it sweet that the Dems are the party of the educated. Hopefully, more of the educated will start critical thinking and skip over the line to our side.
4
Paul Krugman, undoubtedly the descendant of people who funnelled through Ellis Island, understandably promotes the half-truth of "a nation of immigrants".
The Legend of Ellis Island was reality for only a short period of time, roughly 1880-1920, 40 years out of 400 years of Europeans in North America. The weepy tales of irish escaping potato famines and evil English brothers;in-law is .... naturally.....overblown Irish "blarney".... irish moving from one english zone to another english zone hardly counts as "immigration".
....
In the 1960s, USA inspired by its total world dominance, eager to show the entire world the benefits of democracy and american values......altered its immigrtion politices to favor "politiacl refugees".....people escaping the ravages of wars....WW2 still being fresh in everyone's minds. Since the 1960s european ellis island style "immigration" was discouraged.....while "refugees" were encouraged. Refugees clinging to old values,,,,refugees with axes to grind.....refugees plotting return to old worlds, using american wealth and naivitee to their advantage..........
WE are....more accurately........a nation of REJECTS......the rest of the world does not want us.
Wanna see a know nothing, Paul? Look in the mirror.
1
You certainly have a rather poor view of refugees, as if they have no intrinsic or potential value. Fact is that more African immigrants have or obtain Baccalaureate degrees than native-born Americans. They contribute much to our society, pay taxes and own homes.
They are not rejects.
Having worked alongside highly skilled "immigrants" personally, I can say that they know a lot more about our country than most of the know-nothings that currently call themselves Republican.
2
Republicans trash immigrants and progressive cities because it gets them votes from the white, less-educated residents of rural and exurban America. But you can't really blame them. Scapegoats are all they have to offer these people.
7
What is the end game for the Trumpocrats? Abolish the things that are holding us back as they see it; like the Bill of Rights. the rule of law, progress, democracy, science, education, and immigration.
When we have a society where race is the key factor and rase racists are in control, we will have made the transition from the nation which became the hope of the world to Neo Nazi America complete with a racist dictator who thinks he is a genius and Neo Nazi a party that steals the people blind and arrests all opposition.
Like in 1933 Germany racism, scapegoats and mass arrests with a leader who was a pathological liar, who wanted rule by a master race where the very rich, mine owners and industrialists, like now are riding high. Time to break out those history books before they are set on fire.
7
Dystopian once hated subaltern transcending 21st Century Know Nothing notions of accepted whiteness: Catholic Irish, Italian, German now welcomed by KKK recruiters.
1
You can't fix stupid.
But you can manipulate it easily, even if you're only slightly less stupid. And when you realize this, you'll not even want to fix it.
Ergo, Republican strategy.
5
You must be young Tonto. Smarter and more knowledgeable than Richard Nixon? You know not whereof you speak young man.
Trump is a crass egocentric, loud mouthed, foul mouthed braggart and hold on to your hat, American to the core. Barack Obama was and is of a different ilk.
2
blue states subsidizing red states so they can lower the country to wallow in ignorance, superstition and racism.....
12
Well, the "know Nothings" of the 21st Century face a serious, serious problem. You've lost control of the dialogue.
My genetics have been on this continent for more that 10,000 years. I am a military veteran (commissioned officer), earned an advanced degree from an Ivy League institution, am a retired entrepreneur who feels financially comfortable despite not being "really, really rich," and I have a volunteer public service resume at the federal, state and local levels that goes on for two pages.
And you know what? I don't think that being an American has anything to do with race. While I rarely agree with Sen. L. Graham, I am certain he is right that being American has to do with adherence to an idea and not a racial identity. An intellectual grasp of and emotional tie to the meanings of the Declaration and the Constitution far outstrip any specious claim to "being American" that racist, white Americans claim.
No, real Americans come from everywhere, in all colors and genders and from all levels of wealth. What makes us Americans is that we believe in the ideals set forth in an Enlightenment Document that you poor sods have not the intellect, character nor courage to grasp.
The torch is passed to a new generation of Americans...your and your pathetic fake president no longer control the conversation. The world is allied with us...not with you.
23
"Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the muslems,
And everybody hates the Jews."
Tom Lehrer, National Brotherhood Week
5
And how about a chorus of "Good-bye, Mom, I'm off to drop the bomb, but don't wait up for me"?
The image of the Know Nothing included in the piece should be dated 1854, not 1864.
Shades of Nazi Germany when Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats. Trump wants immigrants from countries like Norway, and not African ones. Eugenics? The rise of the aryan race? He plays the race card to pander to his base. Yes, he's a racist. His mantra is like the lyrics from a folk song, "if you are white, it's all right. If you are brown, stick around. But if you are black, go back."
8
“When you are going through hell, keep going.“ I often use Winston Churchill‘s wisdom these days to keep me going. Do the same, remain active at elections, and we will outlast these know-nothings to have a better future for everyone. That was exactly the positive and moderate message that my state’s newly elected governor shred last night in his first speech to our legislators.
The haters do not have actuarial reality on their side. Lots of them, from my experience, are old, fat, choked with rage, and unhealthy. Trump will eat too much junk food and we will be rid of this pest. Bet on the millennials, people of color, and most women to do the right thing. Otherwise, we are sunk.
10
When an obviously honest politician like Dick Durban is undercut and demeaned by two lying Republican jokers, then I think there is real fear for our republic. Trump lies all the time. And most people realize this, I think. In a good country, a sane country that would make lying politically incorrect, as it should be. But the opposite occurs here. Instead of censuring the president, these members of his own party adopt his great sine qua non: if you lie long enough and keep lying, people will believe you. When lying catches on as a way of life, a pathway to success, a great weapon and truth is no longer valued or recognized, then I think you have a country already in great decline, or at least in great trouble. So let's not say Trump will ruin America. Trump has already ruined America. And this is terrible and horrifying. We are losing our country day by day.
22
I also find it very frightening that many Evangelical Christians such as Pence are looking forward to the End Times. Combine no-nothingism with extreme religiosity at the top of government and you have a wonderful recipe for disaster.
28
I hadn't though about the "end times" religious point of view. It makes sense that the Evangelicals support Trump. Who better to hasten the Apocalypse than Trump and the current Republican Party. After all the Evangelicals are against the peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian war because they beleive that Revelations predicted the Apocalypse would be triggered by a war between the Jews and others.
1
Decline of social mobility, broadening gap in wealth distribution and rise of religious bigotry and racism that ultimately led to Trump Presidency can be traced to Reagan era of early 1980s.
Reagan almost single highhandedly and irreversibly damaged American education system- both basic school and, more importantly, higher education by making that just another for-profit industry. Fanatically religious Reagan also infused religion in American public education. Now influence of religion in American higher education is at its worst and growing and it's not limited to just Christianity. Large scale import of religious fundamentalists, mostly from developing countries, in American higher education and research is also taking its toll in creating a ignorant and fanatic voters. Many racial and religious minorities exploit democratic party to get political support while white Christians use Republicans. In that battle of political supremacy and support for vote is damaging American democracy and probably leading to a major conflict in future. Changing demography will make it worse unless it's addressed in a more serious and matured way by national leaders.
7
This present "conservative" administration seems to be against everything that I was taught makes America great. The values instilled in me and our children over the past century and beyond are now being broken down by Trump and his empty headed know nothings. It's becoming almost that lying is the greatest value. Woe is me.
7
Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.
Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book V, Chapter XI, §13
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
Ch. 1: Introductory
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
Ch. 1: Introductory
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
Ch. 1: Introductory
The affect of policy changes don't happen instantaneously, it takes time for the outcomes to take place. Trump will reduce immigration and beat down science. In doing so he attacks the only sure ways to have economic growth, and that is population growth and technical innovation. The GOP and Trump are going to cause an economic down turn that could be a very long one because of the damage they are doing to the core of the economy. Their goal is to lower us all to the level of Trump's base relative to our education and opportunities. They think they can convert everyone to a brainwashed masochistic baby. After all, they have been very adept at doing that for 36% of the population.
5
An amazing pice of political fiction.....Krugman obviously can't stand the fact that unemployment is low, GDM will it 4%, and the stock market is on fire with all the regulation eliminations and oppression of companies being cancelled. It seems to me that the Know-Nothing entity here is Krugman. The problem with "highly educated" Americans from academia is that they really do know nothing because the real world must work hard to be successful and this rules out academics like Krugman. It is the hight of conceit for Krugman to compare his academics with real hard working Americans. I'm a modern conservative with 2 Master's degrees in Engineering and I never met a hard science professor that leaned left. The rest of the academics have done incredible damage to the nation by inflicting their nonsense on college students who are too young to know better.
1
I'm just guessing (I don't know that many) but I would hazard a guess that most of those with advanced hard science degrees believe in evolution and global warming that is at least partially caused by man. They probably also don't believe in virgin births and resurrections. Wouldn't this put them to the left of center in our current political climate? That would be my guess.
2
I'm a Liberal with a Electronics degree. Perhaps "Hard Science" college professors lean right but the rank and file of hard science working people cover the whole spectrum of political beliefs. I don't recall any of my hard science professors advocating any political point of view to us students. Your attack on Krugman is based on your own political views but you are not honest enough to admit it.
1
I hope you or someone else didn't invest huge amounts of money in your "so called education." It was a waste of a precious resource a more deserving person may have needed.
1
I believe it was an advisor to the first President Bush who said of the nation's economy: "I don't care if we make computer chips or potato chips."
While few would repeat that statement today, a lot of recent policy and personnel choices suggest that this baffling sentiment is alive and well.
It is ok to favor a smaller (but effective, honest and able to enforce laws) government, but not a smaller national intellect. Beyond lacking economic competitiveness, citizens willing to believe nonsense are at high risk to turn to or enable criminality. This is everyone's problem, regardless of region.
2
The one thing that I've learned through my travels as a consultant that amazes me is how much the people from the southern states hate California, north eastern states and Washington D.C.
I have sat quietly and listened to them about how they'd like to "cut California off the map and push it into the ocean" to sink under the waves. They feel the same hatred for the northern states.
Their vituperative hatred for people of color is shocking, and combined with their talk about the amount of AR 15s and ammunition they've hidden away for "when the time comes" is frightening.
The U.S. nurses a band of vipers who'd be happy to kill all those that are not like them or do not agree with them.
I think the U.S. is at the brink, and it does not look good.
10
What makes today’s know-nothings so dangerous is that they are so right while being so wrong. If they were a bit more left, they’d actually be a bit more right,
2
Republicans are attempting "to narrow regional disparities, not by bringing the lagging regions up, but by cutting the growing regions down."
Hmm, is this what Paul means? :
Senator Ted Cruz said the newly passed Republican tax bill will make everyone's taxes go down with the exception of "rich people in Manhattan and San Francisco ."
2
The problem with today's Know Nothing people is they think they know everything. Look at what Trump says: "stable genius", smart, made billions etc etc etc.
6
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
- George Washington
10
Every aspect this current madness make sense only if you replace "great" with "white" in Trump's slogan and this planned support for anti-intellectualism has just one and only one objective - to garner electoral votes.
5
As far as I can tell, this all started with the Reagan acolytes embrace of the Laffer curve, which presaged the tendency of Republicans to create their own self-serving reality for the gullible base. George H.W. Bush, as a candidate, tried to say this was “voodoo economics”, and was not taken seriously. We were all off to the races with nonsense assertions on economics and now misrepresentations on a whole range of issues.No wonder the people who believe all this think colleges are not useful anymore. The irony is that,because this political/psychological orientation takes the form of a religion rather than an objective discipline, you can’t reason or convince these people of their fundamentally mistaken conceptual grounding. May as well be trying to convert them to Sufism. They are going to believe that when you cut taxes, the national debt goes down, and all kinds of other dangerous ideas. You just have to beat them at the ballot box.
10
Everett Dirksen, Senate Minority Leader from 1959-1969, explained that JFK's tax cuts were from the start known to be revenue positive. They substantially cut the top rates, but big corporations typically paid less than half the theoretical rate (sometimes not one cent) anyway. The money was made by curtailing a lot of
deductions, which were greater then than now.
And as I mentioned election night 1980 to a Republican friend who suggested that the Laffer Curve under Reagan would overcome simple arithmetic, Laffer's original
article (not the back of a napkin version) clearly stated that IF THE TAX CUTS WERE PAID FOR BY MORE DEBT YOU DON'T GET THE BENEFITS. Too bad that when Republicans adulated him Laffer neglected to mention that, and just basked in the glow.
1
On the other hand, if some of those earlier waves of anti-immigrant feeling had been more effective, America would probably have been spare Donald Trump.
2
I can remember 40 years ago a right wing co-worker telling me that his son was a fine young man until he went to university. I can remember it was common knowledge that the greatest enemy the University of Kansas had when I attended that school in the 1970s was the state's own conservatives out in the western counties. They didn't like Lawrence being a bastion of liberalism. This is a continuing American problem as Doc K. points out with his historical lead-in.
6
They who want to save America will turn their frightened and contemptuous opponents into friends by respectfully working with them to achieve mutually desired ends, of which there are very many.
2
Bush listened to his gut. If Trump listened to his, it would be a 12 way conversation. Experience, knowledge and expertise have been replaced by myth, superstition and belief. And, the really sad deal is, 1/3 of the country seems to be just fine with this.
4
Excellent column, Dr. Krugman. But we need to understand what is driving the current know-nothing movement. It's Trump voters. They're proud of their bigotry. They're proud of their willful ignorance. They're proud of their hate. And in Trump, they found the perfect person who reflects their views. That more than one-third of the country's citizens is in this group is sickening. But their numbers force Congressional Republicans to toady to them.
To think that the vast majority of Republicans disparage higher education is disgusting. Higher education has historically been a ladder for upward mobility and professional opportunities for the working poor, immigrants and minorities. And as long as Trump voters control the agenda, higher education will be trampled.
Your data show that what these Trump know-nothing voters want is other people's money. Areas voting for Ms. Clinton account for nearly two-thirds of the US GDP. These areas include a disproportionate number of highly skilled, highly educated citizens. By contrast, the Trump know-nothings want tax handouts from those Blue state citizens who aspire to accomplish more for themselves.
Trump is the perfect model for his base -- he's had everything handed to him. His voters expect the same. They can't stand the thought of hard-working minorities getting ahead of them.
Their idea of winning? These Trump know-nothing voters would rather drive this country into the ground than to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
5
I am very afraid that the United States has reached a tipping point. It seems that unlimited money pouring into state elections has given us governments so gerrymandered that correction is almost impossible. The climate change deniers,white nationalists, freedom caucus members (why do we allow them to call themselves that?), vaccination opponents and flat earth society boosters seem to have taken over the country. I fear to think where we would be if Newton had called his ideas the "Theory of Gravity". And they are trying to undermine education so that their poison is not corrected.
A nation gets the government it deserves.
10
The Trump regime's attacks on science, environment, press, immigrants etc are disgusting but immigration policy deserves a more nuanced analysis. Krugman is safe in his job but others are not so fortunate and may have been replaced by immigrants willing to work cheaper, they have a right to be concerned. Since modern massive immigration commenced in the 1960s unions have declined greatly, real wages have stagnated and labor rights have eroded. Immigration is not the only cause but it has to be a factor and we have a right to be concerned. Also, unlike sparse population of earlier times, the US population is approaching 330 million and the effects of growth, sprawl, and consumption are eating up the beauty of our countryside, eliminating some wildlife and wildlife habitat, adding to congestion, we have a right to be concerned. Finally more so than immigrants from everywhere else, immigrants from Middle East countries are arriving from places where they are often taught to hate the west, hate rights for women, gays, Jews, atheists, and as we know, in a few cases this results in destabilizing terrorism. We have a right to be concerned about that too, and pejorative terms like "know nothings" or xenophobes are not a counterargument.
1
Dr Krugman,
The poor of Ireland never had a chance and the centuries of flight pale in comparison to their sorry plight during the potato blight. The blight hit all of Europe but only in Ireland was it seen as an excuse to get rid of the bottom third of the population who did not add anything to the Irish food export economy.
The .1% owned everything not only in Ireland but everywhere in Europe. The thing about Ireland and the potato starvation is that there was an abundance of food in Ireland enough for everyone and more to export to feed those who could afford it. If that was not enough laws were written to stop food from elsewhere arriving in Ireland for those who could not afford the oatmeal, pork, beef butter and cheese that Ireland shipped to the world.
The Irish starvation was an economic decision and was the same economic discussion the USA is having in 2018. We call it an income gap but it is the same political debate . In 1845 at Westminster you had the Bernie Sanders side and the neoliberals lead by The Economist that had the establishment of both sides arguing it is all about the economy.
In Ireland the decision to starve and deport all those on the wrong side of the income gap was made and one million poor people died of starvation and two million were deported.
I fear America has made the same decision and America's poor will suffer the same physical, nutritional and intellectual starvation Ireland's poor suffered for hundreds of years before the blight.
6
Rachel Maddow -- as usual, ahead of all of us -- did an entire episode on the parallels between Trumpism and the Know-Nothings on the night during the campaign when Trump achieved his first patina of "presidential-ness" at a joint press conference with the Mexican president in the afternoon and gave a virulent anti-immigrant speech at a rally that same night. But the history she spoke of ended differently than our era - with the defeat of the Know-Nothings before they gained access to the White House. Still, sadly, it made the point that this nation of immigrants whose perhaps most enduring symbol is the Statue of Liberty has always harbored a deep strain of anti-immigrant bigotry. As she pointed out, like a chronic disease, it may go into remission but that doesn't mean it's gone.
It's possible that we'll never find the cure. But our votes, our voices and our passion are the antibodies that must keep the disease at bay by standing up and giving witness to the fact that the hatred of immigrants is not what makes America great, it's what makes America sick. It's time to MAWA -- make America well again.
4
I think modern Know-Nothings began with the Reagan era, when Laffer scratched his curve on the back of a napkin "proving" that if you give vast tax cuts to the rich, they will trickle down on the rest of us. That premise became doctrinal tenet #1 for the GOP from that time on— religious in nature— despite non-stop economic evidence that The Belief was false and Laffer was just a dope blathering on a napkin. But the horse was already out of the barn for the modern era of The Belief and GOP I believe what I believe and it's fine to ignore reality know-nothingism. Over two decades toss in a heavy dose of racism, the poisonous and apparently contagious hatred of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, the mind-numbing mental prestidigitation underlying Citizens United, modern "reality" TV, endless media outlets that can create reality silos, and fast forward to 2016. We should not blame the working class people who voted for Trump as know-nothings. They were desperate people whom politicians on both sides had come to ignore and disdain. That's blaming the victim. But we can hold to account the GOP Know-Nothings frothing in their power and money and the Know-Even-Less guy in charge.
3
Dr. Krugman,
A marvelously educative piece of history!
2
What PK says about the trumpican party is surely accurate qualitatively.
What is less evident is the extent to which the preference for evidence based sober analysis + civic discourse is higher for groups outside the 33-35%
of the electorate that has sworn a blood oath to il duce.
About 33% of eligible voters in 2016 did not vote. What are the internal
belief structures and levels of disorganized thinking among this large group?
Are their lives so chaotic that they cannot nor wish not to engage with
civic society? Are they so emotionally disconnected/disgusted with the society that they couldn't care less what has happened since January 17? If so, this too represents a form of know nothingness via its nihilism and obsession with
self righteousness (or just football rankings). This bodes badly for
the society since it signals that ignorance, indifference, and simplistic moral revulsion are hardly confined to trumpicans.
A third issue involves those college educated suburbanites
who lean right but have had it with il duce and his incoherence and
immaturity. Some part of this group belong to "conservatives with a
conscience", represented by certain columnists for NYT. A canonical example is perhaps the sixth district Georgia voter. Will they continue to vote for trumpican enablers, aware but uncomfortable that's what they
are choosing since they like their tax cut and mandate repeal? Voting
for enablers and not their puppet master won't change much.
2
The GOP has it clear that their propaganda works best on the uneducated and unthinking. Maybe that’s because there simply is no carefully crafted argument that supports robbing the poor for the benefit of the rich. Trickle down is the best they can come up with.
So it’s expedient, even logical, for the GOP and their billionaire backers to support the anti-intellectual and superstition and serpentine subconscious divisions.
3
I recall a term paper I wrote in college on the Know Nothing Party. Very few Americans today are even aware of its existence. The Party was principally based on religious hatred targeting Catholics and Jews. There was little need to direct animosity towards blacks since most were still slaves. Today's brand of nativism is different, principally focusing on blacks. The astonishing reality is that we still have a large segment of voters who harbor the same hatreds that created the Know Nothings more than 100 years ago. Education clearly is not the answer. One has to believe that the voting public today is better educated than in 1850, and better educated today than when Martin Luther King lead the march on DC. If education cures racism, how can we have a Trump, Sheriff Joe and a Roy Moore? Did Alabama voters nearly elect Roy Moore because the are uneducated? Have you never encountered a racist physician, or attorney or educator in you lifetime? I once sided with Krugman believing that education was the answer and that society and politics today would be far different from the 60's. I never would have believed how wrong I could be.
4
Thanks Paul I think I know the details of Italian and Irish migration from both sides of my family including my new book Newark then and now.
1
Known-Nothing also seems to include the inability to recognize even where your ideological purity ends and your own self-interest begins. Ironically, the recurring theme of GOP politics is the inherent evil of government "redistribution." And yet, without such redistribution the disparity in both productivity and living standards between Red States and Blue States would be even more dramatic.
2
"Know-Nothings" should be called "truth and other people are nothings". These people distort and destroy truth and reality in service of gaining and keep control of authority and the resources of others. Nothing more, nothing less. Prejudice and hate are just a useful tools as leverage to bend the will and take advantage of the moral and intellectual weakness of others. They have proven again and again that they do not have a core and consistent belief system and/or code of conduct that they follow. Whether it be the cloak of religion or support of party as justification of their actions, they do not hold true to their beliefs when it does not serve the goal of acquiring and keeping authority and resources for themselves and those who support them. Money in politics has destroyed any integrity it had.Trust in our leadership is gone and will destroy us as a nation if we do not have honest and consistent leadership in service of the constitution and the people, instead of greed and an increasing bend toward authoritarianism. We are at a cross roads. Vote.
2
Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley probably did many things in their careers, but history only remembers them for the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 which remains today as the prime example of the damage that protectionism can do.
Protectionism is the progressivism of fools. Gandhi was a great statesman but a horrible economist. Just as the ignorant in the USA argue that American workers who earn $15 per hour should not have to compete with Chinese workers who make $2 per hour, Gandhi thought that Indian workers should not have to compete with American and European workers who have the benefit of modern machines. As a result India adopted protectionism. In 1947 the per capita income of India was similar to countries such a South Korea. By 1977 the per capita income and standard of living in South Korea was many times that of India. India has since largely abandoned protectionism and has benefited immensely from free trade. Just as Ricardo proved would be the case when he developed the concept of comparative advantage.
Protectionism can save jobs. In the USA the best measurement of the cost per job saved to the rest of the country is about $1 million per job saved.
To save a million jobs via protectionism would cost the country a S1 trillion which would be about the same impact as a very severe recession. To save 10 million jobs via protectionism would cost the country a S10 trillion. That would make the USA a poorer country than Mexico..."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4032821
2
Trump is crude and insulting, but he has been a competent president. With tax cuts, deregulation and a pro-business tone, he has completely reversed the poor growth caused by President Obama's policies. The stock market is booming, unemployment is low, and his policies of enforcing our immigration laws is increasing the wages and jobs of African Americans, whose unemployment rate is the lowest in recent memory. Sixty-six percent of Americans say the economy is either excellent or good. Furthermore, he has done his best to keep in campaign promises. Finally, our adversaries on the world stage now know that we cannot be pushed around, unlike during the Obama presidency. It is nice having a President who believes in America - warts and all.
1
I hate to tell you, but I'm African American and am generations away from being a maid or a porter or bussing in a restaurant or many of the other jobs that undocumented workers do here. BTW, I am and have been employed legally for over 40 years.
1
While the Left is general the party of facts and intellect, on the topic of immigration, I fear that we are also becoming the party of know nothings. Today, raising any concerns about assimilation or the costs of immigrations or the ability of unskilled labor to find jobs as automation increases, provokes not a thoughtful discussion of facts and statistics but instead the shrill cry, "Racist!" Indeed an educated economist like Krugman should understand that each era of immigration was surrounded by a vast wave of differences in terms of both the state of the US at that point in time and the state of the world as well.
The U.S. is no longer a vast largely unpopulated prairie, nor are the majority of our jobs unskilled farm and factory work. Unless one of our two parties rejects dogma and confronts the major challenges of our era with a renewed commitment to facts, reason, and compromise, I fear that only a know nothing will think the future holds any promise for America.
3
I'm sorry, but anyone who says "build a wall" and "Norway" is a racist, and should be called out in no uncertain terms. I have not seen any objection from the left to penalize employers who hire undocumented workers, and this raid certainly did nothing to discourage such hires. Contrary to Fox nonsense, we on the left are not in favor of unlimited immigration, non-citizen voting, or "free stuff." We are in favor of enforcing the law, and we understand that illegal immigrants working under false social security numbers are paying taxes and will never be able to collect the benefits. We are also in favor of educating children, so that they will not grow up to be burdens on society. There is no comparison between the positions of the right and left on immigration, and we will call out anyone who says we're the same as them.
2
Trump won his narrow Electoral College victory by exploiting the fears and frustration of a section of the country that believed he would bring back the America they saw slipping from their grasp--an America where one didn't have to deal with other races, strange new technology, gay couples, women's rights, or any of those other aggravations that hadn't been complicating their lives back in the 'fifties. He would "make America great again"--no details provided about why it wasn't great already or how it should be greater; he left it to his audience to envision their personal "great America," whether they saw it in the past or the future. Not only do such voters know nothing, but they don't want to know anything that conflicts with their dreamy MAGA image, and Trump--more and more to his own peril--still caters to their poll numbers, apparently genetically unable to recognize actual "fake news." Let's hope his "nothing" style echoes through all upcoming elections, and only voters with awareness and concern for the nation will cast their ballots.
3
In an information age, net neutrality and universal broadband is the infrastructure basis for spreading opportunity in economically stagnant regions of this country.
Must be why preserving net neutrality and promoting universal broadband is on the lips of every legislator and in every headline...
2
This only confirms that it's become clear that we have "a war on achievement' in this country, while ironically the GOP is encouraging future immigration be limited to the skilled and well-educated which could only reinforce the fears of their base.
2
Thank you Mr. Krugman for speaking the truth!
I personally want to know what has happened to the concept stated during the Gettysburg's Address Indicating that our Government was:
"made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people"
For this stance and Value is disappearing rapidly under the GOP's Control of Congress and Through Trump.
When Our Government continues to defend and tweak the truth of/for one man while also functioning primarily for themselves while illustrating a hate filled agenda, (hate of the poor, hate of races and hate of Immigrants) then how on our country's earth is this a stance and value for We the People.
Has such values and stance disappeared under trump and the GOP controlled Congress or is it that these people simply have no respect for Our Country whatsoever!
2
Funny the point about cutting growing regions down to bring others up to the same level; conservatives often argue that taxing the rich is the equivalent, in that one taxes success to help those who fail. Good debate could be had here.
"So will our modern know-nothings prevail?" Here is one possible answer. About one hour ago, 50 Senators voted to restore net neutrality! Educated voices are being heard and now we only need one more Senate vote to defend our right to speak up. An educated public is our strongest defense!
3
Yes. 1980. RR wins. Dumbing down begins. Trickle down begins.
Alarms were sounded then, and repeatedly after that right up to today.
The alarms were largely ignored.
Now the roof is caving in.
6
It's all failed "supply-side" heterodox Austrian School economics that replaced the highly successful Keynesian economics when Reagan was elected. The
suppliers are doing very well. The rest of us...not so good. Why should those whose very ability to make & retain great fortunes not bear far more responsibility for maintaining the system that made this possible? Imagine if any of our billionaires had been born in & grew up in Bangladesh?
"Trickle-down theory. The less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm & superstition.
- Adam Smith - author of "The Wealth of Nations"
"Labor is prior to, & independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, & could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital & deserves much the higher consideration."
-- Sounds like Bernie Sanders, but it was Abraham Lincoln.
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science & literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
- George Washington
2
I live in a rurally isolated and generationally impoverished region in southern Oregon. I grew up in Vermont, and in between these two points got some serious education at boarding school, private liberal arts college then grad school in the performing arts. As a kid on a farm in a very small town with half the people sharing the same surname, I recall that people valued what you thought -- that is in large part how they judged you, particularly because how you thought often led to how you acted.
Today, I find the same phenomenon, people value what you think, but if feels different: if what you think is what they think, then it's OK no matter if the opinion is factual or not. There is a tribal force centered around opinion, and fact has no bearing in this formation. In this scenario, if an opinion is based in fact, it won't necessarily be alienated due to its objectivity. The inclusion of opinion is simply whether tribal members agree with it subjectively no matter if it is fact based. They may not even acknowledge the fact behind the opinion, because most of the time all they see is the opinion.
Good education leads people to traffic in facts and then form opinions around them. A lack of good education just leads people to think having an opinion no matter where it comes from is good enough. People actually think that their opinions can be looked up in an encyclopedia because they can see that they can look them up on the internet.
4
I have a theory about why the coal country folks are the way they are. I have read that the companies actively discouraged any diversification of the economy. They held those populations closely. These people became "company men" utterly dependent, not just economically, but mentally too. They became SERFS.
Most Americans would have moved to new jobs when coal production shut down. After all, there has been a crying need for more strong workers in the Dakotas as the oil boom there took off. Why didn't they move? Because they developed the mentality of SERFS, tied to the land, waiting for the next master to come and give their lives structure.
I have compassion for them, but their simultaneous cry for help accompanied by a fear of socialism tips me off. They are not the mobile independent Americans we think, or hope we are. My own credo has been that if I do not like the situation I am in, it is basically up to me to change things. If we truly reject the notion that government should solve our problems, we need to act ourselves. Maybe coal country needs an attitude adjustment.
5
I saw Trump on TV reassuring an out-of-work coal miner not to worry. "Coal is back," he crowed. "And you, your childen & grandchildren will always have work as coal miners. Shades of the 19th century. Coal declined primarily because electricity producing plants have been turning to natural gas, solar power, wind power, & other renewable energy sources. There will always be a steadily shrinking market for coal unless the GOP & the Koch Brothers manage to suppress cleaner 21st century sources of power. It's like trying to get the ultra-modern residents of the fabulously wealthy United Arab Emirates to return to burning dried camel dung for cooking fuel.
2
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely." By far, the most important sentence in this piece. Which is something that centrist Democrats of the Clinton ilk, and their cheerleaders (such as Mr Krugman) were not terribly concerned with (neoliberal, globalized trade supposedly would lift all) for an awfully long time. If you ignore a fair chunk of the population, and let them drift into poverty as a result of your policies, you should not be surprised if eventually they vote against you.
1
When you become anti-education, even anti-fact, you become resistant to any rational argument.
The way forward will be to persuade those swing voters who CAN be influenced with actual facts, while avoiding the overwhelming urge to belittle those who cannot.
2
Babs...we on the right are not anti education, rather we are anti educational indoctrination! For those on the left, whose cry and languish is for "diversity"....why is their no similar call for diversity of thought, at the university.
Any one who has fought the tenure battles in higher education knows...failure to "walk the walk and talk the talk" of progressivism, is the death knell to your career!
I as a retired entrepreneur, who risked everything for my dream in the US. I would like to remind you that countries like Norway do not penalize us as a class. If, as an entrepreneur, I am in Norway my family is provided health care and education. Simple? No. You have to live it in the US to know how it scares us,if we have families, to know that our adventures will punish our families if we fail.
The GOP does not care.
6
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely." I recently saw a map of the USA that color coded places where robots replaced manufacturing workers. The Midwest states were united in one deep color. And the states that produced 64% GDP most likely had a hand in designing, producing, and distributing those robots. The Know Nothings of the 19th and 21st centuries demonstrate that simply economic policy changes will not help, especially if they are rooted in revenge. John Dewey maintained that democracy and education exist in a reciprocal relationship. Participating in democracy actively educates citizens mutually to one another hopes and needs. President Lincoln governed with the understanding he had the consent of the governed. And democracy cannot progress without an educated citizenry. John Dewey rightly noted, "Every autocratic and authoritarian scheme of social action rests on a belief that the needed intelligence is confined to a superior few,...". In contrast, he stated that "the foundation of democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in human intelligence and in the power of pooled and cooperative experience." I believe by positively and actively affirming our democratic traditions and institutions the Know Nothings can be rendered useless and ineffective and the benefits of growth and innovation will be spread more widely. Let the light of our democratic ideals dispel the darkness of the ignorant and tyrants.
1
I am a student of history, which helped me navigate a life in national security and foreign affairs. Like many others, I have made the Know-Norhing comparison but the current Know Nothings (AKA, "the base") want to know nothing about the Know Nothings. They are immune to history, an illustration of the decline of education in populations where a refusal to accept climate change or evolution is widespread. It is why Betsy Devos is probably a greater threat to the Republic than Scott Pruit or Ryan Zinke. If we can't get basic science or bedrock understanding of our Constitution into the heads of our high schoolers our decline is assured.
What's left out in Krugman's analysis is Tocqueville, a favorite of conservatives until Trump came along. In his Democracy in America Tocqueville predicted our vulnerablility to demagogues like Donald Trump. Inspired by local politicians and Andrew Jackson, the great French observer foresaw the threat to democracy from politicians able to sway the masses into unthinking followers.
in the Trail of Tears Jackson ripped land from the native tribes of the Carolinas and adjacent states to give to his poor white, landless base, sending the tribes on a merciless march to less hospitable Oklahoma territory. Trump's sabotage of the Dreamers was deliberate, meant to send them off on their own Trail of Tears while blaming Democrats. Expelling 800,000 innocent Dreamers would be a moral horror and an act of ethnic cleansing.
6
This is so good, it left me dizzy, my head spinning with a proliferation of possible responses. Put simply, there's only one major party in this country that is actively engaged in subverting public education. Whether it is done as a way of maintaining income disparities, preserving a worker class for wealthy elites to exploit; prolonging the existence of biases (especially race and class) that a more enlightened citizenry would reject; or because they don't believe in the value of education for its own sake, the GOP's anti-intellectual positions and actions ensure 1) I will NEVER be a Republican and 2) whatever is left of the Republican Party post-Trump will not be worth belonging to anyway.
5
And, out here in California (writing from Tiburon,CA) before the anti-German, anti-Irish xenophobia, there were the Chinese welcomed by Leland Stanford (yes he founded the university) as cheap labor to build the difficult western portion of the transcontinental railroad. But, their reward was the Muslim ban of its day called the Chines Exclusion Act of 1883 signed by a Republican President from New York, Chester Arthur, that halted all immigration fro China for 10 years. So it was, and now sadly so it is again. The only differnce is skin color and the counterfactual that America now has more hobs than qualufied workers. Once again the psychology of fear of the other overwhelms the irrationality of the actions, in this case mass deportatiobs of skilled workers. And all it accomplished is making America a little bit whiter and a lot poorer.
2
Krugman does us all a disservice by calling these people "know-nothings." They know plenty. They know that freedoms can erode, that rules can be broken or changed, that people will stand still while you rob them if you distract them with scary stories. They know plenty, and we should be very concerned about their intentions.
120
Yes, but these are not mutually exclusive -- "know-somethings" are quite aware of this as well. This is why e.g. the concern over hacking of our elections by a foreign government.
3
The leaders are but the majority who are hangers-on are just intellectually challenged.
No-Nothingism comes from the pain of the have-nots. The party that can get its voters to the polls wins. Thus, we have outrage as the primary electioneering tactic. Krugman's column is an example.
The Democratic party is a coalition of racial and ethnic minorities plus the college educated. Democrats continually accuse "whites" of prejudice and "original sin". The rights of immigrants are virtuous. The Republicans, naturally, see an opening to working class whites with an appeal that counters the Democrat narrative.
Most Americans do not have a college degree and, as we all know, people without a degree are doing poorly economically. The Republicans use immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, falsely as the cause of less educated people's problems.
If progressives want to win elections, then we must offer a believable and understandable alternative that addresses the legitimate anger of the majority of Americans that do not have a college degree. Progressives must unite "whites" and "minorities" against the oligarchy that runs our lives.
2
You have provided a set of facts and a logical course of action. However, facts and logic have been shown to be of no help against fear and hate. Are you proposing a campaign by progressives of fear and hate? I can't see how, even if it works, that could improve the governing of our nation.
I've been saying for the last 18 months that the "Know-Nothings" have returned.
Along with a resurgence of racism, corporate greed (the "trusts"), and corrupt politicians, there was a similar backlash against college education, not only professors, but also against "effete, idle, useless" college students during the period between the Civil War and the start of the Progressive Era, contrasting with the "self-made man" such as Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller
2
Excellent. I agree that the late 1800s are a very good parallel to today and as you point out, in some ways we are re-fighting the same issues. The one big difference is that the 1800s were an age of no federal taxes, very weak regulations, and mostly laissez-faire capitalism; a libertarian's dream. This economy richly rewarded the successful and ruthlessly penalized those at the bottom. I wish more people paid attention to this period of history.
1
Education is the best, if not our only, means of seeking and finding truth.
Formal education is not necessarily the only means. Many wise people have been self-educated. The real value is in the seeking, the open mindedness, of one who wants to move from darkness into the light.
Being in the dark leaves one vulnerable to being led astray by those who want only to manipulate, to exploit others for their own selfish needs. Humanity has experienced many of these seekers for power. More’s the pity.
91
The Republicans have been instigating Class Warfare for decades. Their first front was to identify the classes then divide. Once identified their main tactic has been a series of sieges on the Citadels of Education. By starving the population of knowledge they hope to remove our ability to make willful and education decisions. Once starved and thirsty for any information they know we will be open to the Trojan Horse of Magic and open the gates. They don`t want to destroy the Citadels, they want control. Control of the Canons of Education will give them the ability to fire volley after volley of dis-information, the poisonous Magic Elixir that will allow them to extract the Gold from our Democratic Experiment.
4
Perhaps the country needs to introduce poll tests to ensure that anyone who votes understands what he is voting for, or against. I write this with only half my tongue in my cheek. When you hear the televised comments of so-called "conservatives" you do have to wonder why they are allowed to vote and, worse yet, run for public office.
3
Agreed.
Stagnation is the enemy of greatness. And what is stagnation? Lack of movement, lack of growth.
Why are immigrants so integral to American greatness? Because they are willing to move. They embrace the new and the strange in order to improve their lives and the lives of their families. They don't fear the "other," they are drawn to it. They embrace the promise of the America that can be, while all too may American natives just want to preserve their idea of what America was.
The battle of our time isn't against evil (though there is much wickedness at work right now) it is against ignorance.
How could we forget that knowledge is power? How could we be foolish enough to equate achievement and quality with elitism and dismiss facts and truths as mere technicalities to be ignored wwhenever we feel like it?
We are just playing into the hands of those who know that ignorant populations are more easily manipulated and controlled, especially when they have not just been kept ignorant, but have been persuaded to embrace ignorance voluntarily.
We must find our courage to embrace change - new ideas and new people - to stretch our minds and reach for new heights, personally and as a country. We must repudiate the purveyors of ignorance, stagnation, and bigotry currently in control of the Republican Party, if the US is ever going to slow its slide into stagnation and rise to greatness again.
4
America is probably dying. It welcomed the barbarians of cutthroat capitalism into its cities and farmlands, and turned a blind eye to the bribery and mischief that allowed those creatures to buy off politicians.
Now there is another "country" rising, and it is that of the world-wide 1% investor class, who admit to no nations boundaries and to no nations laws or power. They regard humans as just convenient tools to be discarded or killed in wars, as the military industrial complex demands. The rules of 1% Country are hidden, and the laws are not published, and the true rules only show themselves rarely, as at Davos.
No, Trump is just a tool to weaken America so the barbarians can finish their work, as they did in Russia. Democracy is an illusion in 1% land, and words are just weapons of manipulation.
Such is life, such is the passing of another great empire. I mourn the dying of the America that lived in my heart. I thought it cared for me and those like me...then came Vietnam and Iraq and Trump and the war against the poor...
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
11
Prof. Krugman,
Thank you for keeping your focus on the big picture, and on the fundamental assumptions/beliefs that form the basis for this President's and the Republicans agenda.
President Obama came to office believing that the majority of Americans shared the same values and beliefs in what was needed to address the country's problems, and never questioned that assumption, even after major setbacks for the Democratic party at the polls that made it ever harder for him to enact his agenda.
Obama and many others thought it was sufficient to accuse the Republicans of being cynical and partisan for failing to compromise. He didn't think it was necessary to convince people of the rightness of his arguments, he simply wanted them to agree to meet him halfway.
This approach failed spectacularly due to the huge divergence in values and perspectives of the two parties.
Thank you for your continued efforts to remind us of the reason we are where we are, and the reason Republicans need to be voted out of office in order to move forward.
2
Dr. Krugman, I believe that all well-meaning legislators--that is, all but a few Democrats and none but an extremely few Republicans--should shout your message from the rooftops and from lecterns and their seats in Congress and state legislatures and at press conferences and in all media forums. It will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for our country to rise from the stinking swamp that Trump and all his sycophantic cohorts and wealthy, greedy, totally selfish donors have dragged us if people do not understand the crucial importance of truth over falsehood, facts over myths and opinions, and the necessity of relying on proven, empirical science in our lives if we are to survive as a nation and as a species.
2
From my perspective, there are two things that will forever bind the Republican Party to power, above all other things.
1. The Evangelical's belief in the United States as a "Christian nation."
2. The 1 percent's insatiable avarice at the expense of everyone and everything else.
4
What does a welder look like today? It isn't a guy with a face shield and an apron. It is a robot. The benefits of that technological advance are going to a select number of people and the downsides of that advance are going to a different set of people. It is no wonder that their is a split in society and that education and technology are at the center of it. The luddites are rising again.
1
I have, lately, been thinking of both Know Nothings and know nothings. I have been wondering why all these "Christian" Republicans talk more Old Testament and live less New Testament. They want to go back to the glory days when millionaires really did run the country, unions were forbidden, and blacks, immigrants and the poor stayed in their "proper" places. No, the Democrats aren't perfect - some are just as useless as most Republicans. And there are a few Republicans who seem to use their minds for more than devising new ways to split the country apart. In my opinion, the best thing that could be done right now - today - is term limits!
5
I find myself wishing that we could adopt a Parliamentary system of government. If we had one, perhaps new elections could have been called for by now.
2
One of the great ironies of history is that the GOP calls itself the “Party of Lincoln” and conveniently overlooks its historic origins in the American (Know-Nothing) Party. The Know-Nothings were more numerous in the birth of the GOP than were abolitionists.
2
Trump doesn't care about education because he loves the uneducated, because they often have underdeveloped critical thinking skills and so are easily duped. They largely make up Trump's base, and he needs all the support he can get from them. He also caters to this base with his America-first anti-immigration policies to show them that he keeps his promises, although it is really his inherent narcissism that compels him not to back away from these promises, regardless of their highly detrimental effects on the country. We know from "Fire and Fury" that Trump campaigned under the assumption that he probably wouldn't win and was mainly trying to promote his brand. He hadn't planned to be president, and is incapable of being presidential, and we see that every day in everything that he does. All he has left is milking his predicament for all he can get while hoping he and his family escape criminal charges and prosecution. And we need to do our best to ensure that they do not get away with it.
4
How interesting that Dr Krugman signally fails to mention that the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s was folded into the nascent Republican Party of that same decade, like the meringue in a cake batter.
2
Excellent column Mr. Krugman. The way through bigotry and bias and prejudice is through education and getting to know many people from many cultures and walks of life. The more people dig in with anti fact thinking and an anti knowledge mindset, the harder it is to affect change.
I find it both sad and infuriating that the greatest K(k)now nothing of all got elected through racism, a racist mechanism (the electoral college) and a hostile foreign power interfering in the election. If we were a true democracy one person one vote, the cancer in the WH would have lost by 11 million votes. We must keep fighting for education and equality for all!!!
3
It isn't necessary to know anything if one has an ideology that proves all the answers.
Dr Krugman,
What is racism but choosing to believe things that just aren't so?
There was hunger in Ireland from 1845-1852. Ireland's economy was based on the export of pork, beef, cheese , and grain and every year that the potato crop failed Ireland exported enough food to feed all its people for all the years of the potato crop failure.
The people who starved and were deported during the blight were the people that Swift wrote about in his Modest Proposal 120 years before.
The people who died or were deported were not the victims of an act of God but were the causalities of an economic system where the 1% owned all the land and all the means of production. It was the parliament at Westminster that decided that the three million souls that disappeared during the blight should disappear.
The Irish that arrived in the coffin ships were not refugees they were deportees. Their hovels were burned, they were loaded onto the ships by men who were paid a bounty for loading them onto ships. Someone might say the blight was a godsend for Ireland's 1% and the 70% who recovered the land that three million people squatted on for hundreds of years. The Economist considered feeding the starving masses to be an economic crime and food from abroad was not allowed to land. The food Ireland produced was private property and the potato eaters had no money and no means to obtain the money to buy it.
Ireland had lots of food, it chose to starve its hungry because its the economy stupid.
3
Dr. Krugman's line about rejecting facts that might conflict with one's prejudices summarizes the quintessence of political correctness. Thus one could argue that the rise to power of nitwits and charlatans that the US is now experiencing is not a reaction to the PC movement but its direct consequence.
I've contended for a while that one of the biggest problems facing America is the Republican propaganda machine: hate radio (Limbaugh, Hannity), Fox News, Breitbart. It's brainwashed our citizens (my uncle, brother, nephew and a friend are some victims I know personally) and it's made them firm in their belief that educated people and facts are the enemies, and that they are correct no matter facts and statistics.
How do we, as a nation, address this scourge?
4
Public education has been declining for years in this country. Lack of funds and lack of good teachers who have refused to work for a pittance have all contributed to this problem.
The last thing the Trump congress wants is a well educated, coherent, critically thinking population. So it is to their survival to dumb down the American public and sadly we are starting to see the results and success of their plans.
1
The innovative regions are the locomotives of our economy. Bring them down and the whole economy stops and starts slipping down the hill.
2
I visit Montreal as often as I can -- it's only six hours from my home in New Hampshire. The effect is immediate. I feel like I'm in a superior country. Walking down the street knowing that people aren't armed, ignorant and angry is tangible. You almost never see a bumper sticker declaring which side of the social divide you are on. Actually you almost never see a bumper sticker period. Art and culture is taken seriously. And of course you realize that the only people without health insurance are likely to be American tourists. I don't see anything changing in America. We're second rate now and will remain second rate.
10
We have immigration laws that already welcome many from other nations. The Dems, however, want to admit "undocumented" and "illegal" immigrants. Anyone who believes that immigration should be strictly controlled and "legal" in the 21st century is derided as a "nativist," and it is generally assumed that one can't be "nativist" without being "racist." So, unless you believe in unlimited and unregulated immigration, you're automatically a racist!
If the Dems go all the way to government shutdown for the purpose of defending and expanding the "rights" of undocumented/illegal immigrants, they will tell all of America that this is the most important thing on the liberal agenda. This will not look good to conservative Americans, who believe that those of us who were born here, or who immigrated legally, are the ones whose rights and well-being need to be protected first. Dems will undoubtedly win 100% of the undocumnted/illegal vote, but it's safe to say that most of them don't vote.
Here we are with an historic opportunity to take back the government from Republicans, if we can focus on unifying issues such as economic inequality, health care, and education. Instead, Dems look poised to throw away another opportunity by implicitly calling half of America "racists" and fighting hardest for the rights of those who entered and remained in the country illegally. Not the best way to win back Trump voters, for sure, and could even be a way to lose more Dems.
1
Krugman prides himself on being a rigorous economist, but he is conflating arguments here in a far from rigorous manner. To say that "this new divergence reflects the growing importance of clusters of highly skilled workers — many of them immigrants — often centered on great universities" may be true, but this has little to do with the large-scale low-skilled immigration that is the focal point of the debate today.
In a developed (and built up) country with slowing growth rates and a strong welfare state, we should at least be having an honest debate about the proper level and type of immigration that is desirable, rather than sticking to an outdated status quo that has existed more or less by accident for decades now.
The United States is now a complete outlier versus the rest of the developed world regarding its immigration policy. Previously this may have been justified given our unique fundamentals, but this distinction is eroding quickly.
By insisting that current policy is fine the moderate left is ceding ground to the far right on this issue. A bipartisan compromise that drastically reduces family migration, expands opportunities for skilled workers, and tightens border security and employment provisions would be favored by a vast majority of Americans (see the 2007 proposal). The real debate is around what to do with those who are currently here illegally, and we should acknowledge the difficulty of that question.
2
Moderation man, your points are well taken. But some updating is needed. It seems that the bi partisan group that met with Trump last week was a group of moderate members on immigration issues from both sides of the aisle. And it seems that the Dems are willing to support some form of heightened boarder security and pay for it, as well as accept that there needs to be serious changes to chain immigration and the elimination of the lottery system in return for a DACA fix that most members of Congress on both sides of the aisle seem to want.
The President said at the public portion of the meeting “bring it to me and I will sign it. Even if there are things that I don’t like I will wave them off. I will take the heat”. Literally 30 minutes later Anne Coulter gave him a lot of heat and he completely collapsed from the heat and at the next meeting rejected the entire agreement because there were things he didn’t like. So much for “I will sign it”.
The Dems will do something with a DACA fix and most Republicans will do DACA with strong security. Aha compromise! But Trump WILL NOT in the end do a DACA fix because Coulter and the entire cadre of talk show hosts will see this as the path to citizenship that his base abhors.
He will never buck these people on a path to citizenship. Ever. He in fact will not and can not, take any heat on anything. Classic bully.Therefor there will never be a DACA fix. He is now setting up the inevitable failure to the Dems so he has cover. Very sad!
2
All of these trends explained by Dr. K are good to know but we must win back the House this year. One thing we learned in 2016 was that we cannot be complacent, and believe the oddsmakers that our success is inevitable.
To win back independent and disgusted Republican voters, we must make JOBS the central thean of every candidate, of every policy position, and of every news release. Remember how Bill Clinton won with “Its the Economy Stupid”.
Jobs is how the Republicans win many voters that should be against there businessman-oriented policies.
Also, Democrats MUST push a reform of so-called welfare programs to change those programs into job-training programs. The Repubs are right that our current programs are failing if we see 2 or 3 generations (or more) still not working.
These programs also need to train the working poor who already have Kobe to move up to better jobs.
If we don’t get out in front of the 2018 Repub version of so-called welfare reform with our own jobs-training reform, we will never get back the House.
"Over all, the South is home to more than half of the 50.4 million Americans living in distressed ZIP codes. It is also the only region in which more people live in distressed locations than in prosperous ones."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/business/economy/poorest-areas-have-m...
Of course the South is dominated by Republicans. This is what they want to do for the country. Their policies are ignorant. Their anti-environmentalism is dangerous. Their anti-worker policies are bad for the American middle class. Their fiscal recklessness is irresponsible. Their penchant for white nativism is divisive. And their obvious desire to increase inequality of both wealth and power is very troubling.
7
No way will America "become great again" if its governing class and one-third of its population refuses to engage in actual facts and scientific knowledge. The fact that most republicans think of colleges & universities as having a negative effect on America should scare everyone with a thinking brain to death.
6
And let's not forget that no less than Ben Franklin considered "swarthy" Germans and Swedes to be a threat to America's pristine whiteness in the 18th century. Know-nothingness avant le lettre! (To his credit, Franklin later distanced himself from this view.)
On this basis, Trump should be doubly considered un-American: for his paternal ancestry from Germany, and his pretended ancestry from Sweden! (His mother's Scottish ancestry would have undoubtedly redeemed him with Franklin).
The idea that Republicans are down on education is ridiculous. What they are down on is the cultural/political indoctrination happening at colleges. It's outrageous that conservative speakers cannot be invited to colleges without Leftist groups initiating mob violence. Have you ever considered that perhaps Conservative professors do not identify as such because of the Leftist threat to their safety?
Clarifies who the real makers and takers are.
1
Paul, you're absolutely right that the 'know-nothings' of our modern America are Trump and the Republicans themselves.
The G.O.P of the modern times compared to the Republican party of Abe's time is as desolate, as ultra nationalist and a party of bigoted Americans who due to their lack of education do not even know the word Racism.
These so called ignorant people just follow their leader Trump who gave them a platform to show their anger at the system that values education.
But most of these "know-nothings" of our time are so unprepared for any jobs that it is really hard for any employers to employ them.
Naturally these uneducated Americans cannot hold on to a job even after getting one because many of these jobs require quite a lot of education that most of the Americans on the left who love being educated, acquire quite easily.
Trump bearing a replica of a true member of the 'know-nothings party of the 21st century, churned out millions of 'know-nothings' members by pressing on the 'emotional' buttons' of the Republicans who think, "colleges and universities have a negative effect on America" like you quoted here.
Because of their bigotry and anti-educational mentalities, the illiterate and ignorant members of G.O.P. "has rejected the very values that made America great", as you wrote.
No wonder that among Trump and the Republican party members we see not a sea but an ocean of classless and clueless Americans only because of their animosity towards basic education.
72
I think it's all about taxes--Universities, if they're to be equalizers, need public support from taxes. I think this is also why they wanted to eliminate the tax deduction from state and local taxes--to put pressure on localities to stop high taxes. Ironically, it's the high tax states and localities that are thriving...I say ironically because to listen to the trickle down theorists, it couldn't be that way.
12
Paul, there is a tremendous disconnect in your logic.
You argue for centers of innovation driven by universities and immigrants.
You would of course be speaking of legal immigrants in this case. The ones that come to university, fill out the forms, wait in line and help our economy tremendously. They are highly skilled. We should encourage these types of immigrants.
Yet you continue to try and conflate these highly skilled immigrants that play by the rules with illegal immigrants that don't as if they are all just immigrants.
Key questions still remain,
How many immigrants should we allow in each year?
What do we do with all of the ones that have willfully broken our immigration laws and are here illegally?
How do we prevent employment of illegal aliens and institute harsh penalties for employers of illegal aliens?
What type of immigrant do we wish to select among the millions of hopefuls?
How many unskilled workers without basic English language capabilities should have?
How many classed as refugees fleeing their "not so nice" countries is best?
The pertinent questions are not being addressed by politicians all too willing to peacock for the cameras and opine the fact that the President had the audacity to ask a difficult question which they would prefer to sidestep.
5
FYI: the bipartisan immigration reform bill that Congress wrote under Obama, answers all of your questions here.
The GOP nevertheless blocked it.
Today, there's a new bipartisan bill on a new president's desk. Like all the previous ones, it includes the bipartisan Dream Act, supported by 76% of the American people.
And yet, a couple of days after having told members of Congress and the media that he will sign no matter what bill Congress can agree on, that he trusts them, that it will certainly be a "bill of love" and that of course DACA most be included it in ... his racist base started to scream, so he decided to use some racist comments in the next meeting, in order to get his voters fired up again.
When politicians and immigration policy institutes have been working on very careful and evidence-based answers to your questions for YEARS already, and one bipartisan bill after the other has been written, only to be in the end destroyed by one or the other Republican who's afraid of the racists in his base, it's pretty clear WHO is taking this issue seriously, and who doesn't have the guts to do what may be difficult for his own career but the right thing nevertheless, when it comes to America's future ...
Finally, don't forget that on MLK day, when a bipartisan commission continued to work hard on the details of the immigration reform bill, the president you believe shows "audacity" was actually golfing ... for the 100th time this year. Talking about sidestepping ...
1
Why do these people oppose contraception, abortion, and family planning? Their policies are no more than sticking their fingers in a leaky dike.
That isn't what Krugman said.
The GOP has conducted a decades-long assault on education, undercutting or defunding pre-K and kindergarten programs, busting teacher unions, funneling public dollars to for-profit schools, cutting support for college education, undermining federal support for inner cities, and on and on. The reason: they know that if the electorate is filled with pooly-educated people who have never been taught to think critically then they can lie with impunity and get away with their ongoing transfer of wealth from poor working chumps to their real constituency: millionaires.
21
Reagan started the decline of American democracy by hurting American education- mainly by promoting religious teaching and schools, making higher education just another for profit industry. Even today, a large part of immigration debate is about religious allegiance, besides skin color and country of origin (almost synonymous to skin color). It seems that Christian migrants and white Europeans (from countries like Norway) are OK with Republicans it seems.
12
Let's be clear. I despise Trump and all he stands for, but he is right about one thing, and that is immigration. Our immigration system is, and has been, badly in need of reform.
Witness the fact that we have 11+ million ILLEGAL immigrants in this country; both R's and D's are equally responsible for this travesty. I have not researched the subject, but assume that the immigrants that Krugman talks about who "built this country" by and large were LEGAL immigrants.
We need to gain control of our immigration system with comprehensive immigration reform and border control. And, for shining a light on that issue, and for that I have to grudgingly give Trump credit.
4
Uh ... it's not as if Trump invented the idea of immigration reform, you know.
The Dream Act exists for more than a decade already, and is a bipartisan bill. Under Obama, a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill was written too. In the end, a couple of Republicans afraid of the reaction of part of the GOP base, filibustered it. So Obama went on alone, deporting MORE illegal immigrants than Bush had, and strongly increasing border security.
So no, it's clearly ONLY Republicans who are responsible for the current mess, which could have been solved long ago already.
And it's certainly also ONLY Republicans who are responsible for the fact that part of the American people only started to think about immigration reform now, and then imagine that nobody must have come up with anything serious before ... .
Finally, if only legal immigrants built this country, and illegal immigrants would somehow have done nothing, then why do you think was it that Republican president Reagan signed amnesty into law for almost 3 million illegal immigrants ... ?
And then we're not even talking yet about the fact that the comprehensive immigration bills of the last years aren't amnesty bills, but bills that provide a path to permanent residency and in some cases citizenship based on merit ...
Trump didn't invent anything here. He's actually not even negotiating in a serious way, but "trusts Congress" on this issue, as he told us last week.
Okay, let's be even more clear. There was not even an idea of "legal vs. illegal" immigration until it began to be "those people," those then considered to come from SH countries, folks like Irish, Italians, all Asians, and, of course, Jews, began to show up. That's really what this is all about. It is, quite simply, the Republican Party's, until now, well camouflaged enthusiastic adoption of "Make American White Again, which began immediately after LBJ signed the Civil Rights legislation. We desperately need to have the cheap workers--and, in the South, slaves--to feed us at our tables, but, please, don't give them any rights or, for that matter, let them stay around once the meal is over! It is simply evil!
"I have not researched the subject," is precisely correct.
legal immigrants. Really. Know what Columbus did first when he discovered America, or rather landed on ground off the Bahamas that is now underwater?
He had a legal document read to the locals, which a) asked if it was okay if Spain took over, b) was in Spanish and Latin, and c) included a "speak now, or forever hold your peace," clause, which took the natives' silence as consent.
Legal immigrants. What a joke. Sure, we need secure borders--butnot on the basis of lying to ourselves.
I would go one step further: one of the main reasons for the growing geographic disparity is the dominance of know-nothingism in certain regions. Businesses are going to prefer to locate in a place with an educated workforce and openness to the rest of the world than a place with the opposite characteristics. That’s why Singapore took off from Malaysia, why Hong Kong took off from China, and why our own educated, cosmopolitan regions are taking off from our backwards regions.
9
To the Republican assault on knowledge, add the new tax on university endowments, a punitive measure by the party supposedly devoted to reducing taxes not raising them.
10
The latest book of Bruno Latour, an intellectual studying science and who taught at the London School of Economics, sees a reason why today part of the West's elites are starting to turn against science.
Climate change today is such that the typically "modern" project of creating worldwide an economy where in the end everyone who works hard can somehow adopt the "American way of life", is no longer possible.
That means that either we all change our conception of what kind of future we want, so that we can invent a new, common global project, OR ... the elites decide to continue to live the way they did before, which is only possible if (1) they invest "bigly" in protecting themselves ("gated communities"), (2) they manage to hide/destroy the scientific information proving that our way of life will have to change, and (3) they launch deregulation policies, allowing them to accumulate more money before it's too late, and at the expense of everybody else.
If this hypothesis is true, at least part of the elites aren't "know-nothings" at all, they know perfectly well what science has proven to be true, they just want to prevent ordinary citizens from discovering these facts too. And that's where attacking the media and science becomes so important.
At the same time, climate change and wars cannot but cause massive migration waves, so anti-immigrant policies have to create the illusion, among ordinary citizens, that the elites care about them and want to "protect" them too ...
5
Three thoughts: (1) the social system in the US is under stress since many of those contributing in the 1980's now are taking money out for their retirement, (2) the US had a common enemy until 1989, but now the USSR is no more and Putin does not make blind threats, and (3) the GOP/Trump want to reward themselves in every way possible.
3
Conflating "highly educated" with "intelligent" is a dangerous mistake. Today's schools are almost completely dominated by an increasingly fringe political group promoting style over substance, dogma over thought. Until we address that critical problem in our country, our people will become increasingly confused between "truth" and "political talking points."
2
" Today's schools are almost completely dominated by an increasingly fringe political group promoting style over substance, dogma over thought."
Prove it. Science is still science. Maybe you should listen to the people who spend all their lives working on a subject.
2
Actually, it's not that 'Facts have a Liberal Bias'. It is rather that liberals have a fact bias. They actually respect facts, and science. The famous liberal Sen. Moynihan phrased it "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."
Extending the Senator's point, you have a right to your opinion, but not to the opinions of others. Prof. K has opinions about economics. These are known as Expert Opinions. I also have opinions in econ, but mine are not expert, just mine. The smiley-faced cut-outs on Fox News have opinions, the ones they were handed on this morning's Talking Points List, but those are not really their opinions, they are someone else's. Social media is full of people posting Other People's Ideas (OPI), and pretending that this makes them experts.
Your opinion does not change the values in the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. My opinions are not rules of Economics. Socrates' wisdom was knowing what he did not know. The Know-Nothings do not know what they do not know, but in their own opinion they are right.
17
"What’s clear, however, is that if they do, they won’t make America great again — they’ll kill the very things that made it great."
We'll see.
Another option, is that things will be great, and yet another Krugman prediction will have been proved to be based on false premises and an intellectually bankrupt philosophical stance.
1
"Until around 1980, America seemed on the path toward broadly spread prosperity, with poor regions like the Deep South rapidly catching up with the rest. Since then, however, the gaps have widened again, . . ."
Gee, what happened in 1980? Who got elected in 1980?
10
Paul,
Originally, The Know Nothings of the 19th century were known as such for their strict code of secrecy. They started out as a secret society that plotted to block the "papist" immigrant Catholics (mainly from Ireland) from coming into the US. Whenever asked what went on in their meetings they would say "I know nothing".
This part of their story also parallels to our current administration. Trump and his advisors have a mania for preventing leaks. Trump's outrages and illegalities must be kept in house at all costs. In fact, their is much talk about not inviting Democrats to these meetings ever again so that the Dems don't "Deliberately embarrass the President" with his own words.
Like the original Know Nothings, maybe Republicans will one day realize that "no nothing" also means ignorance (they changed the name of their party to the American Party) - but I doubt it.
6
What really concerns me are the educated Republicans who have turned away from their stated beliefs and philosophy and, in spite of their education, go along with the anti education / science attitudes and actions of their party to the detriment of this country.
7
I think that the current conservative movement, and the Republican Party in general, support the rallying cry "Theocracy Now, Theocracy Forever!"
7
I think it is worth noting that Trump supporters really believe that they are the ones who are searching out truth in the face of lying propaganda in the liberal media. I have had several conversations with Trump supporters where they said things like "I am more interested in facts than emotion", "facts are really important for decision making" and "I am an independent thinker and search out a wide variety of news sources to understand an issue". But the last person listed Breitbart, Daily Caller and Daily Wire as her main news sources and her views were pretty consistent with those sources. It is the breakdown of trust in experts that is our biggest challenge as a society.
9
You want indoctrination? Don't look at our colleges and universities. Look at Fox News, the rightwing Internet, and talk radio. They confirm and define reality for tens of millions of Americans, day-in and day-out, 24-7. Education, which for better or worse still begins at home, is the only real inoculation against the viruses that these media outlets incessantly spew. So the GOP would love to make inroads in our schools and colleges, and recruit them to the effort.
There used to be a "fair use" law that the FCC oversaw (if memory serves), which required that if your broadcast company got bandwidth, you had to keep your programming content more or less free of biased content. Now instead, we have "fair and balanced" and "alternative facts"! Way to go, conservatives!
7
"But one way to think of Trumpism is as an attempt to narrow regional disparities, not by bringing the lagging regions up, but by cutting the growing regions down."
This one statement is something I don't think gets enough attention in addressing so much of what is happening in our national culture. Not just pitting one community against another, but individuals against each other. There is a sense that if someone else has a pension, or is getting paid a higher hourly wage than I am that it is somehow undeserved and must be brought back down to the level where I am. That vision is exactly backwards.
8
I have never met an American in my entire life, who (might or) might not be so open on "immigration" matter, but definitely not lax in border security. So, mixing the 'two' will be a mistake. So far education is concerned, let us face it: In a true society, for its better management, there will be a 'congenial' mixture of educated class, semi-educated people and so-called illiterates - that could improve consumerism, spur growth, etc., but it might involve the risk of low-payment of wages to the last category of people - and we pay the price for inequality - a condemned word in the entire discussion...
4
Dr. Krugman: when immigrants were getting off the boat from Germany and Ireland and being processed at Ellis Island they did not become eligible for a host of taxpayer funded programs, help when came from Churches, Synagogues or relatives. The explosion of immigration, along with the insane military budget to protect our dwindling number of allies, is crippling America’s ability to care for its own citizens. The same thing is happening in Britain as the article on the N.H.S. In today’s Times illustrates, a third article in today’s Times on the crushing problems in Beijing brought about by globalization and inequality further illustrate the importance of people such as yourself putting forth ideas to alleviate the problems created by globalization and the resulting inequality. I for one wish you would use your considerable influence to address these issues rather than history lessons intended to denigrate the other party. The parties both stink they have both allowed inequality to explode. The masters of the universe at Davos will be discussing a universal stipend again this year to put off a day of reckoning, surely we can do better than that. Just as the means to balance trade has one solution (tariffs unless you can convince all nations to be equally magnanimous towards the working classses):the issue of globalization and liberalism can only be addressed in one way, a fifties era progressive tax to fund education, infrastructure etc. liberals raise your hands please.
4
Ever look at the living conditions, death rates, and general immiseration of those millions back in ye Olde Good Old Days?
Perhaps I might recommend the photography of Jacob Riis.
I had a professor who once said that being a liberal is much harder than being conservative, because liberals have to take into account many aspects of an issue.
Conservatives who think their views are the "correct" ones, have no interest in thinking "outside the box" or considering other views because ---1) since they are "correct" there is no need to listen/think about others, or 2) when they do consider others their whole world view falls apart--and who wants that?
Dems need to stop trying to rationalize with conservatives and instead focus on all the Dems who have not been showing up to vote. And while immigration issues are justifiably important right now, Dems need to start being much more vocal about how they are going to make our economic system work for everybody, including the middle class.
8
In America, school of hard-knocks learning -- often seen as "practical common sense" -- has long been pitted against higher education and expertise -- often seen as "the eggheads." It's Hamilton vs. Jefferson, city mouse vs country mouse, right/left coasts vs. fly-over country -- and it's one of the oldest, stalest tropes in our society.
Anti-intellectualism, stoked by Trump and Tea Partiers, will not help America maintain its role at the forefront of global society. If ultimately we are seen as the Know-Nothing Nation with the nuclear arsenal, that's not a good place from which to lead.
2
Paul,
The trajectory is clear. The gulf between those that have education AND money versus those that do not is widening.
This can only end on one of two ways.
The first is that those without will start to act out and crime and civil unrest will be the order of the day. The Educated and moneyed will demand and get a police state to keep everyone else in line.
The second will be a general civil uprising between the two groups. It will start out as a war to re-distribute the wealth. How it will end up is anyone's guess.
Since we are living in a new Dark Age where a shared truth built on facts and reason has no coin, there is no third alternative to the future.
4
From eyeballing a map of such, it appears to be the case that high tax states are also the states that are economic engines, generating more federal revenue than they take. It also appears that Republicans are intentionally trying to hurt these states through punitive tax treatment. Is there a vindictive sense here: you guys need to come down into the mud with the rest of us?
One other issue: although the Republicans may denigrate education, it appears that a large percentage of the country understands that this is a key path towards economic security.
3
Mr. Krugman describes a phenomenon that plagues America, but which hardly stays within US boundaries: it is worldwide and growing by leaps and bounds.
All I can say is thank you for calling it out so straightforwardly.
Here's hoping commentaries such as his can strike something good in the US and abroad.
1
The last thing Republicans want are educated constituents that can't be manipulated by lies, distortions and unfounded fears. They wouldn't win elections anymore so of course they prefer the existing Trump supporters and Republicans that will continue to vote against their own best interests. The majority of the people didn't care much for the horrific tax bill, but the Republicans pushed it through anyway. One would think that would be a wakeup call to Republican supporters, but is wasn't. Same thing with healthcare. It wasn't Republican voters that stopped the repeal of the ACA, it was infighting in the House and Senate.
All this having been said, can anyone wonder why Republicans continue to press for defunding education. They'll have no base if their voter's can think for themselves.
It doesn't matter that our nation can't compete in a global based economy. It only matters that the Republicans win so they maintain control.
We live in scary time with a treasonous president and a complicit congress that obstructs without thought. Winning and control is all that matters.
1
Mr. Krugman, I always appreciate your thoughts and feel a sense of togetherness with my own feeling and thought. Unfortunately, I had read the article by Timothy Williams in today's paper first - "For One Baltimore School, 7 Killings in Just 15 Months". That article and the information contained in it was a devasting indictment that it just ain't working and this nation as a whole is responsible.
DoTrump and his supporters really think America was founded and then filled with the best and brightest of Europe? Like most people my immigrant great grand parents from Sweden were poor farm hands when they left. Those with land and money did not leave. Sweden lost half its population to immigration to North America between 1850 and the early 1900,s might explain some of the social welfare programs that make Sweden a country very few would chose to leave now.
I find it funny that Trump would hold up Norway as a example of a country that he wants immigrants from. I can't think of many Norwegians that I know want to leave Norway for Trump land in fact they mostly found it funny themselves.
4
Krugman can take some of the blame. Poll after poll had Sanders carrying many of the counties Clinton lost to Trump.
1
Some keep arguing that Republicans want to trim as much as possible the size of the government.
It seems to me that this is not what they want, what they want is to trim as much as possible to zero their own contributions while, at same time, get as much as all they can from other members of society. That social programs may be squeezed in between is just a consequence of this "modus operandi".
Shift the burden to someone else is the companion of blaming anyone but yourself, and they are so relieving.
We all want a better society but very few understand what is really needed to get there and are willing to compromise.
2
Are there any enlightened Republicans in Congress or the Senate. How about the Republican Governors. All of these Republicans could have helped their States regarding job creation in the poorer States. Between the State Governments and the Federal Government there should have been a hard focus on the poorer States and their citizens to make sure that people had decent employment. And I do not mean employment in coal mines. Those jobs have caused serious health problems for those who worked in the mines
There is no political will to solve the country's problems. The only political will seems to be to not improve the lot of ordinary citizens. After all they cannot give the politicians the big buck donations.
Those German immigrants who arrived here in Missouri in the 1840s and '50s were refugees of the aftermath of the failed 1848 Revolution. Their desire for democracy, and their disciplined approach to education and agriculture, made them enemies of slavery and ended saving our state from secession. The best organized militia in the state were the Germans from St. Louis, who with Nathaniel Lyons seized the armory and Jefferson Barracks to prevent the confederate militias from arming. They prevented the legislature from voting for secession and made Missouri a principal staging area for subsequent Union operations under Grant and Sherman. We owe those immigrants a great deal, indeed.
1
Allowing diversity is great, choosing it at the expense of merit denies greatness. I don't care what color my brain surgeon may be, but that cuts both ways. I don't want my brain surgeon to have been picked because of skin color at the expense of ability. If we're seeking the best and the brightest to keep our great country great, then that should be the primary consideration.
That question shouldn't be discarded and the American people's interest of having the best of the world brought within our shores shouldn't be dismissed simply because the question was posed wholly inartfully.
When I was in college---50 years ago--I worked in a Steel Mill on weekends---and observed first-hand a workforce that had little education, but made good money, very good money. The blue collar workers that voted for Trump want that world to return---when America was great. There are dozens of books like Moretti's telling us that world will never return---
1
First time I hear of the know nothing party but it makes sense! I'm from Europe, I see the US as obsessed with religion. Understandably knowing how we treated religious minorities back then. But I will dare to submit this is part of the problem here now. Read the bible, go to Sunday school and read some more, go to church and read the bible to the kids. Nothing wrong with any of this, but is this the way to develop the kind of critical spirit so important to innovation? I was fortunate to live in other lands, read other "sacred texts", observe other cultures and I became American by choice. I may have come with an MSEE and an MSCS, but really I had an MSKN (MS in know nothing) because my education showed me that certitudes are the enemy of a forever elusive truth. trump is getting us back to the land of his ancestors but circa 1930's when the certitudes of a very stable political genius made a highly cultured and scientific people certain that he alone would make Germany great again.
2
Krugman uses the term "great universities" without much explanation. Would that our public universities be great! In general, they are not great and cannot be great as long as most undergraduate students are taught by non-tenure track professors many of whom are paid McDonald's wages. Classes are h-u-g-e. Assignments are seldom corrected. Tests are multiple-choice. The list goes on. A few years back, an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that at Harvard University---even at Harvard (gasp)--- most undergraduates did not know a professor well enough to ask for a letter of recommendation.
Whoever runs for the presidency in 2018, may he or she campaign on "Make American Universities Great Again!" It won't take much...just the money wasted on military excess and profiteering.
1
In many cases, the more Republican policies of tax cuts for the rich and social program cuts for the rest hurt rural and fly-over state whites, the more these same people blame Democrats and vote for Republicans.
On the other hand, where I live many college educated people voted for Trump and a lot of them still do.
1
So Roger, what do you think of Chelsea Manning running for Senator from Maryland ?
Exactly what credentials does she bring that makes her worthy to represent constituents in the highest legislative body in the land ?
She may not be bigoted or xenophobic, but aside from her giving away classified information to people who were not authorized to see it, her being pardoned by a president, and being an activist for transgender issues, what
has she done to make anyone think she has the background to be a U.S. Senator? Can we also label her a "Know-Nothing" ?
1
There was a difference between the Irish and German immigrants of years ago. First, the Irish spoke the language and the Germans were determined to learn English. They both worked hard and never expected a handout from the government. They also mingled and assimilated with other groups. They placed a high value on education and wanted their children to have the eduction that they lacked. Their children attended college and did very well in their careers. They worked in business and become doctors which allowed them to give back to the community.
Today, many immigrants have no desire to learn English and assimilate. They stay within their "bubble" and do not mix with others. Many do not go on to higher levels of education and remain in low paying jobs. They do not place the same level of value of higher learning that previous groups did. They are given opportunities but do not take them. Whose fault is that?
2
"Today, many immigrants have no desire to learn English and assimilate. They stay within their "bubble" and do not mix with others. Many do not go on to higher levels of education and remain in low paying jobs. They do not place the same level of value of higher learning that previous groups did. They are given opportunities but do not take them."
Even if we were to accept your initial statements, your final statements run contrary to fact. Poor immigrants - as well as poor locals - are not given the same opportunities today as in decades past. Numerous reports have pointed out the decline in upward mobility in the US, for example: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-upward-mobility-fallen-sharply.html
...Andrew
To quote PK today: "Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits". Why doesn't he mention what those benefits can be, instead of repeating the litany of the awful man we have as president, common knowledge to all who oppose him.
Instead he should emphasize a positive agenda, mention what those proffered
benefits are (or should be): increase the minimum wage to $15, free tuition in state colleges, control the banks, government health care. PK has called these
requirements "unreasonable", not specifying why. But only with the constant presentation of a positive agenda, beyond, the wishy-washy offers of the Hillary
campaign that PK supported, beyond the daily rant against a man we all know is a demon, can the Democratic party win in '18 and '20.
2
It is unfortunate that Mr Krugman uses the term " anti-immigrant ". The correct phrase is anti-immigration. In 1917 the USA had a population of 100 million, it hit 200 million in 1967, and with the 1965 Immigration Act it was 300 million in 2006. According to a recent census of July 2017, it is now 326 million and growing. According to the GAO, almost 70 percent of the growth over the past 40 years is from foreigners moving to the USA and the children and grandchildren they have here. It is quite logical to oppose the legal immigration level of 1,000,000 into the USA each year on the basis of the high land values it creates and subsequent high costs of houses. In 1960 the land component of the total price of a house was 20 percent and now it is 40 percent. Thus leading to escalated costs. There is so much pressure due to the growth in population. Likewise the Audubon Club did a 1967 study of meadow birds and one about 5 years ago. This bird population went down 40 percent and they attributed it to loss of habitat. Walmarts love a high and dry field ( meadow ) for their next big box store and you can see the suburban sprawl caused by population growth, with parking lots, office parks, and new roads on what was natural land.
So it is quite logical to oppose the effects of immigration driven population growth. The RAISE Act proposed by 2 Republican Senators would cut legal immigration in half. It is really a moderate plan. But no Democrat will support it.
1
After his electoral success, Mr. Putin must have required his employees to do all within their power to destroy America from within and abdicate any sembance of global leadership. They certainly undertook to satisfy his orders with relish and enthusiasm and have no doubt produced amazing results in record time.
Please, Mr. Mueller, act quickly. Time is short and, given the Republican determination to win at all costs regardless of law or civic propriety, a Blue Wave in Nov is not assured.
1
Paul,
Why don't you see Kenyesians in economist departments? Is it because the Keynesians fought for nothing, the Keynesians got nothing, the world is going to end and its the Keynesians fault.
Some of Krugman’s points are addressed in depth in Death of Expertise by Nichols.
Krugman says "Only the identities of the maligned nationalities have changed." This is false. America's inflated image of itself always tells the story pf the poor Irish, Germans and Italians who came to America and became rich!! True. But the Irish, Germans and Italians who stayed behind also became rich and in many respects have more developed societies than the US. Our myths tell us that Italians were like Hondurans or something but throughout human history, the Italian peninsula has had one of the highest standards of living and been a leader in art, design, engineering and architecture and very much held its own in modern commerce with iconic brands in automotive, fashion, and gastronomy. Peasant farmers from rural Mexico are not the same as Italians. Sorry just facts.
2
Krugman raises many important points about how the GOP has decided to ignore facts and evidence in order to promote their own interests. After many years of this strategy, they have become to believe their own lies. I would venture to say that the election of Trump is a direct result of the scapegoating, dog-whistle, and outright lying as a political strategy employed by the GOP for 40 years.
I can only hope the whiplash that the GOP will suffer in November will defang this administration while the Democrats (and sensible people) put the country on the correct path. The Democrats must develop an alternative vision for the future of the US and not depend on backlash alone in order to be supported by the electorate. Otherwise, we'll constantly undo any progress made in the interim to say nothing of being dismissed by the world as an unreliable and hopelessly divided.
1
Destruction of America probably started during early 1980s, when Reagan led Republican party systematically destroyed public education- both school and higher education. One major reason for its steady decline is interference of religion as a whole and churches in particular increased significantly since then. Now it's at its worst point in American history. It's expected that the decline in education (and it's getting worse) in terms of one's ability to think logically, among current voters and future citizens would take far worse toll (than what we are witnessing with this Trump administration) on USA in coming days.
2
In the age of Trump, I've come to believe it's not what people who voted for him and would still vote for him think, it's that there is something seriously wrong with how they think. Which is very little at all.
1
This episode of the Know-Nothings has it over all comparisons to the past, from a writer using the Civil War as an example, to those who are racists, who default to the poorest, the latest to arrive, etc. Japanese were sent to internment camps, Germans, too, Chinese faced struggle, and African-Americans who have been here the longest, have perhaps suffered the most. Other than American Indians, of course. Krugman's point about those counties who voted for Hillary, account for "...a 64 percent of U.S. G.D.P., almost twice as much as Trump counties." The "virtuous circles of growth and innovation" Krugman mentions do add to those who can adapt and have the skills to get those university degrees and benefit from being in the circle. Sadly, as we know from JD Vance, the opiod epidemic, the closed mills, mines, and factories, there are too many who have been left outside. And that's where the unfortunate recent election left our country with the worst possible person as president.
Well, for me this is a timely article because as I was watching TV for a brief period of time this morning Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was telling reporters that Trump's "tough" language wasn't profane and that the Dems want to shut down the government and Donald Trump is ready to lead, ad infinitum. Anyone who would believe that "sh_thead" sow needs to be examined by Trump's doctor, Harold Bornstein.
2
Dr Krugman: speaking of know-nothings and their ignorance of the importance of immigrants and education to the welfare of our country, I do have one possibly related economic question. Can the stock market keep going up and up the way it has been doing lately? It's really giving me an uneasy feeling. Do these know-nothings somehow know something about this that the rest of us have been missing?
2
I am no authority but I think the relevant concept is "boom and bust".
1
I wish I could hang on to a shred of hope for the country's future, as Krugman does, but it looks like Game Over for the country as we have known it and idealized it. We will be in ruins after three more years of Trump, especially if GOP majorities prevail in Congress. And that's if Trump doesn't blunder into WW3 and make it Game Over for the whole world.
On the one hand there is the know-nothing urge to destroy parts of the government that function well. And on the other hand there is time forever lost in trying to rebuild infrastructure, prepare for global warming, and get our excessive militarization under control. We imagine all sorts of external enemies while the real threat is our own self-destruction.
1
I have to slightly disagree with Krugman - Ignorance is for the Republican base, not for the elites who run the party. Cronyism, Kleptocracy and Plutocracy is what guides the Elites, who are well informed and depend on an Ignorant voting base. Case in Point: Republican elites used big-data to carve out new congressional districts with pin-point precision. They also used big-data scientists to craft their new tax plan in a way that precisely targets Democratic counties to pay more in taxes, while giving huge tax breaks to well informed elites. The party insiders are not ignorant; they're informed. The best way to control the masses is through misinformation (enter Fox News) and keeping the electorate uneducated (enter DeVos). The Republicans, year-by-year, decade-by-decade, are building a one-party plutocratic state, where there is a veneer of democracy.
2
The Lenape people who sold Peter Stuyvesant a one year hunting lease on Manhattan thought it was adequately populated at the time.
1
Republican attacks on education are an outgrowth of their "Know-Nothing" mindset. Mr. Krugman is right in calling them such because they do, indeed, fit the description. Denial of science based facts, support of biblical tinged thinking, anti-immigrant biases, marching in lockstep with a clearly dysfunctional (and here I am being kind) president...all point to not only a political party with little to offer the country, but one which seems to be actively trying to destroy it. As I've maintained before, we have entered the Age of UnEnlightenment. Let us hope it is a short one.
1
It's so easy to be ignorant and lots more fun. Ease and fun: aren't these the national goals today? Rigor is so yesterday.
2
Could someone PLEASE pull the plug on Fox News, the ultimate In fake news for the know-nothing crowd. When GOP policies only meet the needs of the
filthy rich top one percent, how else can the party survive without duping the know-nothings? Will these voters wake up in 2018?
3
As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
I think this explains the willfully ignorant variety of present-day know-nothing Republicans. As for their bigotry, xenophobia and anti-immigration stance, that's all part of the Southern Strategy that keeps paying dividends for this reprehensible group of charlatans.
4
Universities are all about scholarship, evidence, non judgement, etc. Well duh, that is "liberal". There will be few professors who are set in their ways, insistent on old views. "Conservative" should mean "lets hold off until we get more information," not "dead set against that stuff."
4
Dr. Krugman. This is one of your best opinions. Spot on. It's time to take America back from these know-nothings.
3
That's exactly how Scott Walker (the new Nixon) played it. He told the general population that they should resent union members for having better pay and benefits. Never did it (publicly) cross his mind that perhaps he should concern himself with bringing the standards up for non-union workers. But he's really just a ventriloquist's dummy for the Koch Brothers (as Saint Ronnie was for his ultra-rich, right-wing "Kitchen Cabinet."
5
Please do not jump down my throat, for what I write below is supposed to be facetious - but in fact a sad truth, at least to Donald Trump and his "basket of deplorables".
Mr. Krugman, you miss the whole point, remember what George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm - All animals are equal but some animals are more than others...
I like the narrative but is it right? The south gets all those auto plants. Don’t they require high skills? If so then aren’t there some high skill clusters even in the Deep South? And if so, one wonders how they voted in 2016. Just asking
Non-union "right-to-work" states. That's why the manufacturers locate there.
2
Pono, you’re right but that doesn’t answer my questions: aren’t those high skill areas, and how do they vote?
A lot of smart sharp teachers across all disciplines in this country. I'd like you to consider a new type of pedagogy for our oppressed fellow citizens. You might want to start with this idea and build some something new to benefit tomorrows governing class. https://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Anniversary-Paulo-Freire/dp/08...
As the “great universities” by one of which Mr. Krugman is employed continue to become more insular and disconnected from the broken masses expect No Nothingism to expand. Driveless cars might mean a lot of jobs for universities but they spell death to a large swath of Uber drivers, truck drivers and delivery service drivers. Wasn’t it Mao who sent professors to work in the fields? Not a great idea but at least you can see now what he had in mind.
If you don't know how to harness a mule your goods will never get to market. The elites who benefit from our plutocratic system, whether they be left or right leaning, are in a bubble. The ascendancy of the right can be explained by their tolerance for fleas.
1
Election season always means a massive increase in my mailbox in the amount of glossy 3x5 campaign ads from contestants. Duplicate cards, daily, over and over. Which leads one to believe that the message on the cards, if there is one, is secondary to the amount of exposure. Sad.
64% of GDP comes counties that solidly voted for Clinton. Is this due to education? Immigration? or a roll of the dice? I suspect most likely the later. Not that education isn't important, or immigration, in helping economic growth. It's just that immigration and education probably occurs at the same rate in red as well as blue counties. It's just that the educated are drawn to hubs of innovation, which need a certain density of highly educated people to get the synergys that result. Hence, the virtous cycle. We used to call this a brain drain with respect to places like India. The result is the red states basically see all their investment in higher education leave, or at least never feel the effects of that education. Hence the distain. Yes we need to try to make sure jobs education and the rest is more widely distributed. This should be the focus of Democrats over the long haul. The republicans on the other hand are pitting blue vs red with their tax bill, and effectively doing so by destroying the engine of growth and the long run potential of not just blue counties but everyone in the country.
1
My blue state, where every congressional district and, I'm pretty sure every single county, voted for Clinton has among the finest educational outcomes among states. We even compete with the highest ranking countries on PISA international test scores. This is not by accident. This is not a roll of the dice. We educate our kids K-12, and that's where the investment matters, not at the "higher education" level.
I will give you that the far, far fewer highly educated students who grew up in Mississippi are probably working in Massachusetts now. But, education does not occur at the same rate in red states as it does in blue states. We spend money on education, red states don't like to pay the taxes necessary to educate kids.
1
"64% of GDP comes counties that solidly voted for Clinton. Is this due to education? Immigration? or a roll of the dice? I suspect most likely the later."
"God does not play dice with the Universe." -Einstein
What do you imagine brought about those cores of innovation if all counties offer the same opportunities for education or immigration?
But I do agree with something implied by your post. We as a nation do better with a more mobile population, and individuals and families do better if they are able and willing to move to where the work is found. This implies that the benefits associated with the education of students may accrue far from the locality that funded those students' education.
That tells us that education should be a national investment; not a local investment.
...Andrew
1
Liberals love to conflate illiterate manual laborers with computer programmers from India and China.
While in the 19th century, we needed unskilled workers and could absorb millions of illiterates from Europe, that is no longer the case today. The immigration policies we need would be similar to Canada; all immigrants must have education and skills.
So how will we fill the unskilled jobs that are now filled by illegal immigrants? We in fact have a huge pool of unskilled people who are 'not in the work force'. These people think that employers won't hire them, and as long as illegal immigrants who will work very hard to low pay are available, they are right about this. However, if no one else is available, employers will even take guys who have been in prison. Wages will go up, people who were considered worthless in the past will find some sort of job, and the unemployable/welfare population will shrink.
3
A funny thing happened in Alabama and Virginia recently: the Democrats won. In no small measure, it was due to a sudden perception, an epiphany, by Democratic leaders in Washington that they cannot win if they come across to big blocs of voters as "know-betters."
So they poured in vast resources to help get out the vote, but in so doing kept a low profile. They were careful to avoid the appearance of trying to dictate what candidate or what issues local voters should support. And it worked!
They also let local candidates decide what issues to stress, and what voting blocs to court. In Alabama, Doug Jones assiduously courted black voters, and it paid off, handsomely.
So, if Democrats want to combat the "know-nothings," they need to learn the lesson from Alabama and Virginia. They need to avoid coming across as "know-betters."
Here’s what one Times reader wrote in a reply to a comment I posted recently on this subject:
KBronson Louisiana 2 days ago
You are talking about the people who I refer to as the "Know Betters", the vast majority of whom are some sort of liberal. I would rather put a conventional enemy or an openly selfish scoundrel in office than someone who claims to know what is best for me and intends to cram it down my throat. That sort of person is the greatest enemy of my freedom and my dignity.
• Liberal Outsiders Pour Into Alabama Senate Race, Treading Lightly, NYTimes, December 10, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/yas32s5r
3
I was unaware that our system of regionalism made accepting campaign contributions from out-of-state some moral wrong.
"Know betters?" You mean the reality-based community?
1
"So will our modern know-nothings prevail? I have no idea. What’s clear, however, is that if they do, they won’t make America great again — they’ll kill the very things that made it great."
I don't know what I might add to this. Maybe racial hatred, hatred of women, lots of others. And especially hatred of education. But that is already included. In fact it is hard to single out anything the GOP doesn't hate except MONEY.
2
1980.
Reagan.
Need I say much more?
8
No.
The very same people who denounce academia are the ones who are running to their doctors demanding all the new . pharmaceuticals and the modern treatments such as gene therapy and surgical techniques to keep them alive, bought to you by.....that same academia they despise. And once they are feeling better.....they head down to city hall and demand a sea wall to protect their estate from the ravages of a higher sea level. Don't look at why. Don't accept the conclusion of those liberals doing research. Just take taxpayer money to protect their investment, thank you very much.
6
A good education presents new ideas, and encourages critical thinking. Critical thinking is anathema to the Republican mission of embracing, then shafting, the less-educated. Donald Trump, and his acolytes, love the "poorly educated" voters: without them, Trumpkins would be toast. It's no accident that in republican-controlled states, public education is first to get the spending cuts.
6
Structured ignorance via limited access to a reasonable education is the prime tool that keeps the alt.reality culture industry booming with the 1% shaping and funding and profiting from this culture at everyone else's expense. Its only this which sustains the current puppet show of hatred (racism, sexism, classism...) as the major theater of political diversion and division of our times.
The many political and social tribes we hear about so often really just boil down to two: the uneducated and the educated.
Good luck finding alt.reality devotees in science. Why is that?
3
Do not vote for Congressional candidates, unless they pledge that they will move to censure President Trump for his bad behaviors, including his racist words and tweets, his admissions of sexually abusing women, and his failure to disclose his federal taxes.
2
There ae lots of "no nothings" who hate Trump. I know a young man who does not know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Who has no idea who Papa Doc was. But feels free to preach about how Republicans are destroying the safety net and how Trump is a racist because of his supposed remark about Haiti.
Paul, it isn't just Trump supporters who need to be educated. Many of Trump's enemies are quite ignorant.
I hope you will talk about this some day.
5
Those "Trump's enemies" aren't voting for elites who vow to increase ignorance in the US by attacking scientific research, education and the media on a daily basis, and THAT's what this op-ed is all about, not about ordinary citizens who didn't receive a lot of education yet.
Of course, some liberals didn't study a lot either. But at least they understand how important education is, so they won't vote for people who then use the government in order to make education even less accessible/affordable and who refuse to write and evidence-based bills.
What the GOP is doing today, is deliberately making Americans more ignorant, and deliberately making independent scientific research and journalism more difficult. And that's a HUGE problem.
1
Dow 26000!!! Thank you President Trump!!! Professor Krugman assured us this would never happen-the science was settled! The poor and minorities are hardest hit by Professor Krugman’s wisdom, will he reimburse them for the money they didn’t earn being out of the market at Professor Krugman’s instructions? Did Professor Krugman follow his own advice and leave the market? He must release his tax returns and investment portfolio now so we can see! What is he hiding??
6
Thank President Obama for pulling us out of the Great Supply-Side Recession. What's happening now in the markets is merely a continuation of Obama's success.
3
We had dot.com bubble and subprime mortgage bubble.
Now we have Trump bubble. Guess how will it end?
2
So when an intellectual makes ONE mistake (not a calculation or scientific mistake, but a fear, inspired by a sudden, unexpected event), and then immediately recognizes that it was a mistake and apologizes, he should start paying something to all the poor and minorities out there and "leave the market" etc. ... ?
At the same time, Trump can lie more than 2,000 times in less than a year and all you have to say is that you ... thank him?
When scientists say that there's a scientific consensus, they mean that decade after decade, all the thousands of studies examining a question constantly discover new data that confirm the same scientific hypothesis.
How can you compare this (= what you call "settled science") with ... one single op-ed (= an OPINION piece, knowing that science and opinion are two VERY different things - the former being proven objectively, while the latter is a subjective impression/perception/interpretation)?
Finally, yes, the Dow went back up again, after a short dip. So now things continue EXACTLY the way they were for years already under Obama.
Since when are we supposed to thank a new president for not IMMEDIATELY strongly disturbing the economy ... ?
Trump's first budget isn't even implemented yet, by the way, so how do YOU know how the economy will fare under his policies, once they kick in ... ?
1
Fuzzy history by Krugman.
The Know Nothing Party was anti-Catholic, it's most high profile member was Millard Fillmore who joined the Party after he was President.
The entire country at that time was Protestant and very much against the Catholics. Many an Irishman that came here altered the spelling of their names in order to avoid discrimination. Being an Irish Protestant was acceptable. And yes mid 19th Century Ireland was a hellhole, as Lindsey Graham would say.
Calling The President a racist and all sorts of other vile things is not a very good way to negotiate. Without DACA in their back pocket the 23 Senate Dems running for reelection this Fall have nothing, other than hysteria.
We all watched Hillary lose a $1.5 billion campaign based upon calling the other guy the devil. It worked in '12, but will never work again.
People no longer respond to that, in fact they are tired of it. They are more likely to respond to positives, especially a growing economy with more overtime and higher wages.
The Dems are making an uphill battle even harder for themselves. They have a President who is focused and wants something. Get in there and get want you want.
But then again maybe the President is right, the Dems really don't care about DACA.
4
It's Democrats who started DACA, and Trump who signed an executive order that ends DACA in March, remember?
And DACA is only a temporary measure, taken as long as Congress refuses to pass the Dream Act. The Dream Act is a bipartisan bill written more than a decade ago, and that since then Democrats have ALREADY passed in the House, AND obtained 54 votes in the Senate for, whereas it's Republicans who time and again destroy it.
The Dream Act is now included in the current bipartisan bill that just Congress wrote (led by Dick Durbin, a Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican).
76% of the American people support the Dream Act. That's 84% of all Democrats and 69% of all Republicans.
So I'm sorry, but if in this kind of circumstances Trump STILL can't sign the Dream Act into law, then WHO is he representing, in the end?
Right, the 19% of racists in this country.
So no, using his racist comments as an excuse to give in to the racists rather than representing the American people, and then hoping that somehow the American people will blame the only ones who are truly fighting for them here, probably won't work ... ;-)
1
Only there is no additional overtime or higher wages. There is legislation floating around Congress to replace OT with "comp time" and extend the workers considered "exempt" from OT rules. Remember the rules that the last administration put into place to protect someone who makes $32K a year from being considered a "manager" or "administrator" and thereby exempt from OT rules -- watch out or they could be a thing of the past. And, wait until the shrinking middle class gets the bill from this massive tax cut. Those of us who live in states with higher taxes (who pay more to Washington than we get back) will bear the brunt of this plan with higher state and local taxes to "spite" us. Yes, the pResident is focused on something -- himself, his progeny and the continued growth and dominance of the oligarchy.
1
Trump is a rascist and a vile person, lets have that settled. But wait for the polls next week, if DACA is killed, 60-70% of Americans will blame GOP and Trump.
Looking forward to November!
1
"Less and less are we a nation and more and more just a captive market to be exploited."
Those words from Alan Bennett, though written about England, apply just as strongly to America, reminding us of the political architecture that we have fallen out of love with. His and Krugman's and our mourning is for "a society systematically broken," in his case by Thatcher, in ours, by Reagan.
What he and Krugman and we actually see around us today are the fragments of social democracy.
Bennett was himself a perfect beneficiary of postwar social democracy, privileged enough to be able to take full advantage of all its opportunities for self-advancement, underprivileged enough to need then, and therefore a perfect example of why - despite the right's shrill attempts to drown it - it is still necessary.
He grew up in a "comparatively genteel' suburb of Leeds; his father was a butcher. But he had free, high-quality secondary education, free or cheap concert halls, libraries and galleries, the BBC, free university education at Oxford, and a theatrical career that took off in an England where to be working- or middle-class and from the previously shunned North (read black, Hispanic, immigrant, gay, etc.) was suddenly fashionable.
DT wants us to forget all that, but
"Whereas nowadays the state is a dirty word, for my generation the state was a saviour, delivering us out of poverty and want. . . and putting us on the road to a better life."
5
1) There are a myriad of problems with the Moody/Brookings per county GDP estimates:
(a) Clinton dominate high cost areas. Estimates do not take into account purchasing power parity. Goods and services are far more expensive in blue urban areas than in the rest of the nation.
(b) Clinton dominated the financial centers. One of the flaws of GDP calculations in general is counting financial instruments at face value as a good or service. The inventor of GDP wanted to exclude finance from the calculation because it was not a true good or service, but rather a manipulation of currency.
(c) Clinton dominated the government centers, which take tax dollars from the nation or state at large.
Many of your "high-output" areas are actually high cost of living currency centers created by finance and government taxation rather than producers of goods and services which people consume. These are problems to be solved rather than an economic model to emulate.
3
It seems you do not understand how economy works. Liberal areas in this country do produce wealth, and it also includes blue islands in red states where the action is. Think of it in this way: rural America is like China, where some manufacturing is moved because people there are paid much less and are receiving much less services. Do not blame liberals for that!
1
(a) Clinton dominated the areas where costs are higher because so many Americans find high-paying jobs there, thus bidding up the costs of housing. They demand high-quality goods and services, and are willing to pay for them.
(b) Trump dominated the farm areas. Farming enjoys massive government subsidies, paid by wealthy areas, and depends more than other industries on undocumented workers. Low, often illegally-low wages depress purchasing power.
(c) Trump carried states with the highest crime rates, and crime costs society a lot of money.
1
Aside from anecdotal evidence, do we know that Americans are less educated than in 1920 or 1970? Are there disparities that - one wonders - correlate with those counties you refer to? If it true that our citizens are less competent at the responsibilities of governing - civics is not taught as such any more - why is that so? Hypotheses abound, but is there good data? The far worse case is that large numbers of citizens do not care. Perhaps you can convince me that the answers involve simple economics...
2
PISA results of international students' educational outcomes is a good indicator that our educational system is lacking. We don't do well, overall, compared to the best countries, but certain states, like mine, are very competitive. Other states, not so much. As a country, we are becoming less educated than the rest of the world. This was not the case in 1970. There's good data around for that.
Civics is a different issue. I don't recognize this country because we have too many citizens who want no federal or even state government. In 1970, it was about what the government should be doing, not whether the government should even exist. I find this trend troubling, and I feel that solid instruction in civics and social studies would temper that. And, we used to appoint highly qualified people to head our agencies. Now, instead of Dr. Ernest Moniz of MIT directing the Department of Energy, we have Rick "Dancing with the Stars" Perry who didn't even realize the DOE is responsible for the fuel for our nuclear arsenal. And, don't get me started on Scott Pruitt.
So, the bottom line is that our citizens are convinced the government is full of people seeking self enrichment at their expense. I believe their prevailing attitude is that Trump can be as corrupt as he wants as long he gets them their high paying jobs back.
That's not a nation. That's a mob.
Young people are under so much pressure. A Single Payer system would open up so many avenues of freedom for them. It would also enable more of them to stay closer to home.
11
There are many thoughtful and important points in this piece, and the focus on the role of education and immigration in growing cities seems critical. But I have recently started to worry that the "vibrant cities" vs. "stagnant rural region" is imperfect, in that it fails to account for the large number of people who are struggling in cities and suburban areas.
Housing costs, homelessness, childcare costs, building for the future, changing demographics - these are all real concerns. These problems and issues often dominate local politics, and have nothing to do with a red-blue divide.
Young people, often already saddled with debt, look out at a range of impossible-seeming options. Should they live where they can afford housing but can't get a job? Or where they can get a job but can't afford a home? The costs of starting a family often seem impossible.
At least that is my impression, but if a great untold story of 2016 was concerns of rural Trump voters, I worry that the other untold story of 2016 (and now 2017 and 2018) is the young, city voter. The coverage of millennial politics too often focuses on the horserace (Bernie vs. Clinton) or "kids-these-days" oversimplifications, and I worry we are glossing over very real problems.
The truth (it seems to me) is that young people and young families are struggling everywhere, as wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top and there is an increasing disconnect between incomes and costs of living.
14
The great American secret is that many younger people who have careers that no longer provide enough compensation for a family are receiving money or housing assistance from their parents. This hides a lot of the problems of our current economic system.
2
All the traditional reasons for large families are absent in the US. Children do not provide a return on capital investment here.
Two points:
- Having a negative view of Universities and having a negative view of Education are two very different things. My view of American Universities has gone down considerably over the last decade, partly as a result of teaching at one.
- The Republican opinion of Universities is roughly independent of their level of education, but very dependent on age and wealth (older, wealthier Republicans like Universities less), which again suggests their problems lie with Universities rather than with education.
3
To Ernie
I agree. US universities have transformed into institutions of higher earning, with the corporate mentality having completely corroded administrators' primary missions : assuring research and diffusion of knowledge. I suppose it doesn't matter in the long run, since even the Ivy League will meet its challenge when MOOCS and other forms of internet coursework undercut the existential need for a traditional and overpriced college education.
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely."
Dr. Krugman, we need to go beyond spreading the benefits of growth and innovation, to spreading the benefits even if there is no growth. The world is finite in resources, is quite overpopulated, and consumption based growth is on its last legs. How do we give everyone a decent life without relying on environment-destroying consumption growth? How do we fix capitalism's poison pill of requiring perpetual growth? And don't feed the lie that we will convert to green energy and live happily ever after.
This is the question we need Nobel Prize winning economists working on.
13
We're headed towards bottling everyone's brains and feeding them virtual reality.
"Think of where we’d be as a nation if we hadn’t experienced those great waves of immigrants driven by the dream of a better life. Think of where we’d be if we hadn’t led the world, first in universal basic education, then in the creation of great institutions of higher education. Surely we’d be a shrunken, stagnant, second-rate society."
As much as I want to agree with Krugman here, I'm struggling to think of examples of countries that have suffered stagnation for lack of immigration (for lack of education, sure -- I can think of a few in Latin America). South Korea and Japan, for instance, have done very well without encouraging immigration. The Nordic countries are struggling to assimilate immigrants, but were they really "shrunken, stagnant, second-rate" without them? When has it actually happened, in the real world?
7
"Think of where we’d be if we hadn’t led the world, first in universal basic education, then in the creation of great institutions of higher education."
On the subject of great institutions, many stood--still do, in marvelous structures, all throughout Europe, and parts of Asia (Continent-ally speaking). All which required a basic education and higher; decades and a century or two before Pilgrims sought the freedom to worship in the New World. So, we came a little late to lead, on those matters. However, it has been much easier to lead; especially when writing the rules that others must follow, and were willing to do so. Because the rules were beneficial and not too burdensome; quite reasonable, actually. Fast forward to the Progressive fancies of the 21st Century, when and where a dozen new notions of how man should coexist are introduced. Notions that have never been implemented into a functioning thriving society, anywhere, educated or not. And now we have along with the Progressive societal delusion, disillusion and confusion. People that no longer recognize themselves, let alone a see greatness in anything but the past -- of which those structures remind -- to which they long to retreat. Ever get that message on a computer, 'reboot to the last known start-up that worked'?
Oxford, Paris, etc. go back many centuries, but higher education reached only a tiny fraction of the population. In the U.S. there were was (eventually) not only universal basic education but an enormous expansion via the state universities and land grant institutions that specialized in the practical arts -- engineering, agriculture, etc. World War 2 and the GI Bill transformed society by opening higher education to millions. This should be evident.
1
Just as in history, the Know Nothings became Republicans. And today, just as in history they were popularized by fear of immigrants, minorities and anything new. I'm sure they would've adapted the MAGA theme.
9
Krugman talks about universities but not K-12 education, which has taken an enormous hit in this country and around the world, because billionaires like Bill Gates and the Walton family are following the money and siphoning off much-needed taxpayer funds into their own pockets. Some open charter school chains, some want to replace teachers with computers, and some promote vouchers. All, however, work to the detriment of children, families, their communities, and society at large by working to undermine one of our most democratic institutions: public education. In this zero sum game, money is taken from children's art, music, PE, after-school classes and given to charter operators to line their pockets or to pay tuition at religious schools which teach creationism and neglect true scientific inquiry.
This is a bipartisan problem, with both Democrats and Republicans at the beck and call of the very rich, but we all suffer when children do not receive the quality, well-rounded education they deserve.
26
The Republicans have had plenty of assistance in the diminishing of the power and respectability of higher education from the so-called liberal leaders of colleges and universities throughout the country. Most of these colleges have shifted the majority of their faculty labor from full-time to part-time, itinerant workers that teach without benefits and stability and for wages that would make a Walmart CEO blush. This has weakened the voice of those in fields including the sciences who at one time counted on faculty jobs to make a living. Most faculty can no longer afford to go to meetings to share ideas. They can't take the time to write books or bring scholarly work to the public or even bring students into the lab. Faculty no longer have the resources to even interact with their communities, bring science and learning to the high schools, libraries and community centers. While Republicans have done their best to cut off funding for public education. Colleges have chosen to deal with that loss of funds by instituting labor practices that harm the very nature of science and scholarship. Even for those colleges that have not had funding issues including the Ivy league, the reliance on cheap labor is a growing and settled labor practice. The Republicans have understood that diminshing education helps keep the money and power in their pocket but, they couldn't have attained this without the help of the labor policies of our once enviable university and college systems.
21
It is quite astounding to the extent to which the Republican party has become the no nothing party. Prompted by that biography of Grant I've recently been immersing myself in a few books about the period and the similarities are marked. The piece of research Krugman mentions about Republican attitudes to universities is so extraordinary it's hard to believe. But then expose yourself to a lot of what passes for thought on the right at places like Fox and should one be surprised. It's usually playing at the dealer where we get out cars serviced so I'm compelled to watch and it's total nonsense. Crude and nonsensical propaganda that would not be out of place in North Korea. Unfortunately, human beings are very impressionable so this is what were stuck with. Ultimately, the light bulb does seem to come on as is illustrated by Christie leaving office with a 14% approval rating or the recent result in Alabama but in the meantime?
21
Conservatives believe in the rule of law first and foremost. That the left left continues to paint conservatives as anti immigration is foolish and this simplistic view and contempt is what got trump elected in door of his boorishness.
Conservatives want immigration. But they want it agreed to by elected leaders, not by executives choices on how aggressively to defend the border.
Conservatives want people who come here to share our culture and language. While compassion should allow for some unskilled labor to come ,mostly what is needed is skilled labor . We have plenty of unskilled labor in this country already . Skilled labor will open businesses, hire, and pass along skills which all help the country grow.
There is no first world nation that doesn't actively take unskilled labor as citizens for good reason. It's hard enough to provide for it's already existing unskilled laborers and their families .
3
You folks even force others to procreate when they don't want to.
open your eyes, mind and heart.
Then why aren't skilled Iraqis, Syrians and Haitians considered?
Why would an immigrant already 'share our culture and language'?
Rule of law only appeals to Republicans when it applies to dark poor people. tRump enriching his family while in office doesn't make you think twice. Hey, didn't JKushner attempt to get a bunch of foreigners (who don't share our culture) to invest $500,000 each to get plum visas? If they're rich, or Vladimir Putin, you're OK?
Your 'first world nation' ignores the very foundations of America as the melting pot, land of immigrants, 'E Pluribus Unum'. What value are you espousing if not a GET OUT sign on the Statue of Liberty?
So what's your opinion on DACA applicants? Many are highly skilled; they share our culture and language and provide all levels of labor. Let me guess....... Even though they meet your criteria, it's a no.
Ronald Reagan told them: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." This has become the religion of the hard right - that government is a parasite that steals the wealth of the people. Once you accept that government is bad, then any problem that requires government involvement must be denied. For example, if global warming requires more regulation, then it should be denied as true. Of course, the truth is that sometimes government is the solution, and sometimes it is not. Government is the way we all cooperate to solve big problems, and set the rules of the road for fair commerce. The goal of a proper democracy should be to decide as wisely as possible when and to what extent government should be involved, and when it should not. Instead, the libertarian right simply rejects the need for most government as an axiom, an stops thinking. So instead, countries that compete with us, like China, are becoming the winners by default.
18
During the school desegregation hearings for Detroit Jusged Roth said he saw nothing wrong with involuntarily busing grade school, including kindergarten, kids 45 minutes one way to school. Roth was a Nixon appointee.
Yes the Federal Government can wreak havoc in the lives of Woking class folks.
Part of the reason our country is in the condition that Mr. Krugman describes is because, while Americans pay lip service to the idea of an educated population, we've come to believe that education is actually bad for business. How do you persuade an educated, discerning American to buy the unnecessary junk that makes up a large percentage of what's on offer in this country? How do you keep an educated, intelligent American glued to the TV through the steady stream of lies, half-truths, distortions and fine print that is TV advertising?
A gullible, pliable, poorly educated American is an American who is easier to sell to. And this axiom can be applied to politics just as surely as it applies to the hyper-consumerist society that Americans live in.
508
It is easier to sell a Know Nothing candidate to a know nothing voter but I must defend the thousands of small business owners and operators who rely on the education of their possible buyers to advance their sales. It takes a educated buyer to listen to a presentation on the education of a product or service and many small and honest business people know that and rely on it.
Most Americans would rather be entertained than educated. Spending hours in front of a TV is so much easier (and sometimes more enjoyable) than actually using your brain to learn something.
Our fixation with being entertained, rather than educated, has not only led to the dumbing-down of America, but it has also led to gross inequities in how the purveyors of education and entertainment are compensated. Professional athletes earn multi-million dollar contracts because Americans buy the products advertised on the televised sporting events that entertain us so much. Meanwhile, public school teachers barely earn more than the minimum wage because their salaries are funded through taxes, the sworn enemy of the Republican Party.
10
I think we would have no problem selling consumer goods to an educated population, and in fact advertisers do this all the time. Just open any issue of The Economist or gasp the New York Times.
I think the problem conservatives have with education is that education promotes more open-ended beliefs, promotes the idea that you can't take ideas or ideologies for granted, promotes the idea that it is legitimate to try to see things from a different point of view, including those of people who are different from us. To the educated, this simply being open-minded and intellectually curious, to the closed-minded this is subversive. I recall a conversation with a conservative colleague about a documentary I saw many years ago about the history of the Communist party in the US ("Seeing Red", 1982) and how interesting it was. I was not endorsing Communism, I was simply saying that the stories of these individuals' lives was interesting. His response was a kind of horrified "You shouldn't watch something like that".
8
Safe in The shelter of The Amazon Readership, I wrote a rare essay long ago on being lost in Utter Pradesh by a forgotten author, only to have a snake creep up, with 'A Know-It-All like you', causing this would-be-essayist to wonder how this had come about and what did it mean.
Mrs. Nobody, on occasion, has something to log in, and a 'Know-Nothing' sounds discouraging. You don't seem to know anything, from a philosopher met in Spain, an older man, an American, when I asked what was a Mormon at a tender age. The French nuns at school forgot to give us a course on Religion in America. Now I know that he had not had his first drink of the evening.
I used to ask an African friend what is being taught to Our Children at School in America, causing her to smile. We used to have these fine exchanges about our somewhat similar educational upbringing; she at home in her French-speaking country in Africa, while I was the only American boarded with a friend from Laos in Paris. An attempt at instilling some sense of right and wrong into our heads.
Years later when working as a typist in the Economic Community, my boss and his wife adopted a class of dreamers, a program 'I Had a Dream', implemented by Eugene Lang. It was successful because our American counselor was from Puerto Rico, understood the hearts of our children in the minority, and he cared. We all cared, and this is not going to change.
'Trump' is about to become Yesterday, while the Sun will continue to Rise.
6
The educated class cares less and less for the masses each year. Eventually the masses will protest and demand change. You waive their protest away as uneducated for a few years, but eventually the truth becomes undeniable: that the educated have shamelessly hoarded the profits of the last 40 years.
Who can blame the uneducated for wishing to rule themselves, now that the educated have failed them?
5
The educated haven't failed you and not all wealthy people are well educated.
2
Except they keep voting for a party that will make us all lose in the end.
Nothing will help better than great education & opportunity ( sometimes by the government ).
What we have now is Greed by the SELFISH top, starve education, kill the environment and aversion to reality.
There is a better way than what the rural folks are deluded on.
More so, the Trump base ("I love the under-educated") believes that the coastal, educated elites laugh superciliously at them for being yahoos, overly religious, uneducated, not-too-smart, right-wing squares/goofballs. And the shame of it is that they're not wrong. Blue collar workers and communities have been slammed over the past forty years or so. They see the vast amounts of wealth created with less than zero heading their way. They used to say about Rocky Marciano that he was willing to take several punches as long as he could land one. The base keeps getting hit, but as long as they can ruin some liberal's day somewhere; as long as Fox News, Rush and Hannity continue to stoke the loathing and resentment, grifters like Trump will continue to get elected.
If the Democrats don't do something about this, plus voter suppression, if they don't change their approach from hammering the "Isn't Trump awful" message, to a message that promises meaningful improvements to the base's lives, and get credit for it (very difficult in these days of conservative media's embrace of "alternative facts"), they will continue to roll back all the progress we've made as Americans in the past 100 years.
1
The hypocrisy of the anti-education politicians is that they want to send their children to liberal and Ivy League type universities, while denying good educations to the poor.
American universities are still the greatest in the world and emerging countries send their best students here. There are over 1,000,000 foreign students in the US spending $31 billion.
The Republican tax cuts may be unconstitutional because they discriminate against the rich successful states.
Knowledge is irrelevant when lies are the new standard.
9
Paul Ryan called Donald Trump's leadership "exquisite" and I suppose that's proving to be the case -- other Republicans are now scrambling to embrace the method that Trump uses to deal with all issues, the are just lying, with or without the "believe me" preface of the "I am the least" descriptor. The two Republican senators at that meeting decided to follow the example of their exquisite leader by blatantly lying about what he said. Althernate facts for an alternate universe. Trump said he wished the meeting had been recorded, not a bad idea for the future, although that didn't work out so well for the president Trump most resembles, Richard Nixon. Please US, don't elect any of these Republican slimeballs to the house or senate, let's try to save our country in 2018.
12
The end is only beginning. When foreign student enrolment levels in US universities drop, accompanied by a precipitous plung in foreign tourists visiting America, the signs are unmistakably clear. The United States is gradually morphing into a pariah state in the eyes of most foreigners. I simply wonder what is Trump's end game in this self-destructive policy he and his fellow nihilistic cohorts in the Republic Party are reserving for the country in the long run.
Ironically, America may get destroyed by religious obscurantists within whose eschatological folly mirrors that of the most radical jihadi groups in Islam today. Mr Krugman, please don't ignore the influence of the apocalyptic death cults which certain strains of evangelical Christianity promote out of fulfulling biblical 'prophecy' !
7
Conservatives like Senator's Sonny Purdue and Tom Cotton give total loyalty to preserving their financial and cultural advantages and will do whatever is required to protect their power.
They don't realize how obvious their lies appear to the general public. I'm betting dollars to donuts neither is reelected to the Senate.
12
"Conservatives like Senator's Sonny Purdue and Tom Cotton give total loyalty to preserving their financial and cultural advantages and will do whatever is required to protect their power.
They don't realize how obvious their lies appear to the general public. I'm betting dollars to donuts neither is reelected to the Senate."
I'd take that bet in a heartbeat - I'm sorry to say.
You mean Sen. David Perdue, who's Sonny's cousin.
I have been waiting for someone with media credibility to bring up the Know Nothings. So thanks for that. The other idea this piece sparked in me was the move south in our country of manufacturing jobs. Why was the murdered businessman of Heat Of The Night in Mississippi? Glad you asked. He was there to begin a move of his factory from the north to the south. Why? Ah, cheaper labor of course, and less regulation. Did this movement of textiles and clothing manufacturing raise the south out of the squalor that it existed in? Nope, the factories moved on to the next south, Southeast Asia. Same thing now. Southern governors love to blow about the "major" corporations that have moved to the south, again for cheap wages and less regulation. Has it pulled the south out of the squalor left behind by the plantation/sharecropper/cheap labor textile system. Clearly not. What the citizens of the south (and the new south in the mid West, MI, WS, IN, ND and SD) need to realize is there is more to taking care of your citizenry than a new factory that demands cheap wages and no trouble. The Know Nothings have been there for decades. They finally got another chance to be recognized for what they are.
10
There's lots of evidence to suggest Americans vote personality not policy. We vote against, we don't vote for. Most vote with the side they perceive as winning, usually whichever is more aggressive, tougher and playing offense.
In hindsight, a contest between a woman who's a nuanced and informed policy wonk versus a foul-mouthed, fact-free, raging alpha egomaniac who's a familiar TV personality, is a no-brainer.
Politically, know-nothings trump know-it-alls because presidential campaigns are popularity contests and the winner is whoever is less unpopular. Hillary -- stigmatized by a 20 year GOP misogyny campaign -- failed to define her own persona before Trump did it for her as "Crooked Hillary". That she still won the popular vote by a percentage exceeding all other recent Presidents was no mean feat.
Politics isn't uppermost in the minds of most Americans who have at best a cursory interest in current events, which they usually get from a single source, like Fox or FaceBook. If and how they vote is determined by local influentials. They're Join-The-Crowd, Get-on-the-Bandwagon voters.
Trump, the smack-talk know-nothing-in-chief, was elected by know-nothings duped against that crooked woman and the Black Kenyan before her.
As long as personality and not policy is the center of our political gravity, GOP zombie leadership will remain unchallenged and undead.
GOP prevails because too many aren't paying attention. And can't tell the difference between Know and No.
507
"Politically, know-nothings trump know-it-all's." Democrats should make this a poster to hang in every campaign office. I am a wonk and I vote for wonks. There aren't enough people like me to elect a competent dogcatcher. Democrats need to stay out of the policy weeds and just tell their story.
3
Yes, Yuri Asian, for many of us our votes for President are extremely personal--as if we were voting for Prom Queen/King. The person with the most charisma wins.
We Dems must nominate a person who is not only right on policy but who also has charisma, distressing as it is to realize and to say.
4
'Know nothings' certainly include our mainstream media where the multiple failures of coverage on the 2016 election are just a recent example of inherent bias. The cheerleading and lack of coverage on the impact of globalization also contributed to the outcome. The lack of coverage provided an entry for Fox and others. The readership appears to be just as biased, with their filtered newsfeeds and echo chambers. Included in the lack of coverage are the many missing stories of the failure of the 'centers of innovation', where the middle class continues to shrink in metro areas just as it has elsewhere, where poverty, segregation, institutionalized racism, violence, etc., are concentrated.
This isn’t just conservative propaganda, see the article below.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-jou...
The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political.
So when your conservative friends use “media” as a synonym for “coastal” and “liberal,” they’re not far off the mark.
Sometimes, correcting for liberal bias can be smart business as well. For instance, by rightly guessing that there was a big national broadcast audience that didn’t see their worldviews represented in the mainstream networks, the Fox News Channel came to dominate cable TV ratings.
3
I just recently learned that some (many?) Trump supporters truly believe that, beginning with “the rise of the Children of the '60s,” the Left has “violently taken over the universities” and somehow brainwashed most of the media for the last 60 years. Hence their continued support of someone like Trump.
The Left and Right are fighting for a different America – both say they want liberty and justice for all, but the Right has caveats.
4
The Koch brothers (see film "Starving the Beast") have done their best over the past several years to destroy the best public universities in America. That fact, coupled with the right's business-oriented anti-intellectualism (college is for job training, not education) is a big nail in what is rapidly becoming the American coffin under present GOP domination.
Anti-intellectualism is not new in the American heartland, but sadly, currently it is flourishing.
13
Could the "Know Nothing" reality of Conservatives be due to the simplest traits of Optimism and Pessimism? Our personalities are formed early in childhood. Could the parenting and home environment mold these personality traits? It is plausible that a young pessimist would hold no interest in their future and decline education, only to grow older maintaining that same cynical attitude that makes their children and others pessimistic as well. Conservatives seem universally pessimistic about any subject matter at hand while Liberals hold optimistic views of their own future and their children's as they get older.
I'm an optimist and I see a bright future. Republicans are eternally scornful of so much.
After every long dark night comes a bright new day. That is optimism.
3
Krugman fails to give recognition to the degree to which immigration has boosted the fortunes of rural areas by filling in where "natives" have migrated to the cities. I've seen it in Western Michigan, the farming communities south of Minneapolis, and the farming communities of California (of course) where it sometimes seems there are scarcely any "natives" left. Immigrants have found and exploited a gap in rural areas where there were opportunities left by folks who figured they could do better in the cities. So Trump is not just cutting off the fortunes of urban America by his anti-immigration policies, unless perhaps he is selectively enforcing it only there.
4
The GDP statistic is extremely important. If CA and NY take a few more hits from the Electoral College-fueled Know-Nothing bloc, there will be revolution in the air.
3
The best possible scenario for this country would be for California to secede. All of the Democrat-guaranteed 55 electoral college votes would go away--and Liberals would never again win another election. Without California in the 2016 election, Trump would have won 304 to 172. If we could get NY to also leave, taking their 29 votes, Hillary's total would have dropped to 143.
In fact, without the Progressives in CA and NY, no Democrat would have been elected to the White House after 1964. And therein lies the wisdom of the Framers in devising the Electoral College--to keep large, populous states from exercising undue (and disastrous) influence on the direction of our nations' politics.
Conservatism in America has changed a lot in the last few decades, and the change has a lot to do with the prevalence of both Know-Nothing ideology and know-nothing ideology inside the Republican Party. It has become a vicious cycle.
One can actually see this in the way Asian-Americans have switched support, in dramatic fashion, from Republican to Democrat in the last two decades. Certainly, there is a generational factor. But this is also a demographic group that (1) contains large numbers of first and second generation immigrants and (2) is highly educated. The Republican Party, increasingly obsessed with xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, offers less and less for them. As the Republican Party loses more voters from educated backgrounds and diverse ethnic backgrounds, it further defines itself as the party of white nationalism and anti-intellectualism, because those are the voters who are left. (In fact, we can see in the Sanders vs. Clinton feud, the influx of what used to be moderate Republicans into the Democratic Party has caused some rift among the Democrats.)
But that's how we got the Republican Party of 2018. Trump and Roy Moore are not some aberrations within the Republican Party. They are the culmination of this Know-Nothing/know-nothing movement.
314
Technological progress, globalization and free trade on balance makes almost all people better off. There will be some losers at times. However, any harm from technological progress, globalization and free trade is a likely to impact the owners of firms as much as employees of those firms. Thus, there is no impact on inequality. At one time lack of access to education may have significantly contributed pretax inequality. That is not the case today. The unpleasant truth is that today's white non-college educated working class person is not your grandfather's white non-college educated working class person.
Eighty years ago, there were many very intelligent people who did not attend college because of financial circumstances or because of discrimination against their race, religion or gender. Henry George, arguably the most brilliant American economist of the 19th century, left school at age 14. President Harry Truman was not a college graduate.
Today, with many exceptions, someone under the age of forty who was never interested in college probably is not very smart. That could reduce their wages. That also makes them vulnerable to the lies that got Trump elected. Even some with college educations are not able to understand that NAFTA and trade agreements in general increase employment and standards of living and that immigrants are not responsible for slow economic growth. .."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4134453
2
Sorry to focus on your parenthetical, but if you think the "rift" among Democrats started with Sanders and Clinton - hence your theory that moderate Repubs becoming Democrats fueled it - you haven't been around as long as I have. Starting with McCarthy (Eugene, not the other one) vs. Humphrey, through McGovern vs. the rest of them, through Jerry Brown vs. Carter, etc etc etc - the battle between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the mainstream, mainline, moderate majority in the party has been going on as long as I've been an active voter, with big issues dividing them (Vietnam, abortion, nuclear power in those days). It's a very healthy debate and process, with progressives always pushing and pulling to bring the party a little more towards our views of truth, justice and the American Way. The process succeeded with Obama's elections, and I believe it will again, soon.
Unless we progressives (and our fellow travelers) relocate to potential purple states, however, the new demographics, coupled with the effect of the electoral college, won't overcome shifts of immigrant populations who are already centered in deep blue states. I can tell you, I'm not leaving mine and going back to Indiana - I've been there before.
2
Really? Colleges and universities have a negative effect? Well then, if it's so terrible, let's get rid of it and be content with the absence of medical advances; forget knocking on the door of 80 for an average lifespan, we won't reach 70.
4
Another attempt to narrow regional disparities is through the recent tax bill which will bleed the financially successful regions to bolster those regions where Trump won.
2
Starvation in 19th century Ireland was a political strategy that involved the withholding of bumper crops of food (other than the failed potato) from being consumed by the very people who had grown it on land that was stolen from them that they had to rent. Their 2 million deaths was breezily justified as an act of God against the slovenly, irascible and licentious Irish. Current U.S. Senator Charles Grassley would have felt right at home in the British Parliament of that time.
Extreme inequality in a country of surplus wealth and the depiction of hardworking and landless people as underserving poor whose poverty is justified by God is the current GOP philosophy and practice.
Unfettered capitalism is the hammer of greed, religion its unyielding altar and anvil, political power the blacksmith's inescapable, snaring hand and the poor its pummeled and flattened stock.
11
They cycle of racism, and discrimination in the nineteenth century and even earlier is clearly true. As the article points out, that discrimination against, the Irish, Italians and Germans is a thing of the past. We rose above it as those peoples proved their loyalty and worth. Let's try to be optimistic and believe the same will happen now.
2
I suspect there are plenty of conservative college and university faculty still on campus, at least as we understood the term "conservative" 40 years ago. Today, conservative has become shorthand for right-wing extremist, while the GOP base considers anyone to the left of the Tea Party to be RINOs. When you get right down to it, Obama governed more as an Eisenhower Republican than an LBJ Democrat. Actual conservatives haven't disappeared or been driven from academia; they've been disowned.
1
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man he won't notice that you're picking his pocket clean. He'll give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you."~LBJ
We have real issues that require actual solutions. Rather than acknowledging that inequality leads to anger and resentment the GOP uses it to remain in power. It's much easier to blame immigrants than it is to acknowledge that your policies hurt your constituents. Right now the GOP is catering to the needs of the 1% but they've consistently used racial bias to convince people to vote against their best interests.
We can't keep going the direction that we're going and expect to remain relevant. Already this presidency has tarnished our image. Why would the great thinkers want to come here when they can go other places where their intelligence is respected and their advice heeded. If we don't course correct soon and invest in ourselves we're going to slip backwards as all Republics eventually do before they crash and burn.
3
One quick observation on the perceived negative effects of higher education: this has been imported from the evangelical know-nothing wing of the Republican Party. Politicians such as Mike Huckabee were early to the party railing against higher education as a hotbed of secularism, a position that was easily transplanted into Republican anti-fact orthodoxy.
3
One cannot argue,debate or even converse with those who refuse to admit to any point of view that conflicts with their offerings. It seems like liberals are stuck trying to deal with a group whose real interests will help a few (the rich). Information, in this case is not relevant. The Republican Party is, very simply, neroutic. They are rigid, employ deniels, play the blaming game and own up to nothing that conflicts with their mission. They won’t even compromise. Science and facts are annoying so they must run campaigns to discredit them. If those in the know can’t find a way to discredit the republican agenda, we are doomed. Hopefully, enough citizens have wised up so the voting booth will be the start of the way back to sanity.
3
The entire Republican party of cynical know-nothings can be summarized by Upton Sinclair's well known quotation:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
It is impossible for Republican congressmen to comprehend that global warming exists when the Koch brothers are stuffing their campaign coffers with cash.
8
Yes, Trump and his followers are very real examples of America in decline. Branding and hype will not save us from reality. Will we be able to turn this around before it's too late?
5
I think there is something more fundamental at work here. Conservatism has been likened to a "don't rock the boat" philosophy. It tends to be more accepting of authority, less tolerant of questioning that authority, and holding loyalty above all else. Liberal doctrine is much more tolerant of dissenting views and allowing those views even if they are quite threatening to cohesion.
Academia by its nature is a questioning endeavour. Scientists constantly question others' and even their own analyses and findings. Social scientists take issue with received wisdom and seek a range of views. Some mathematicians even question the theoretical basis of math.
Same with the arts. Why is Hollywood a "hotbed" of liberalism? Because art means pushing boundaries and making people see things in different ways, sometimes even making them uncomfortable.
Banking. Would you want a banker who took a new view to accounting? No, so it's a field that tends to appeal to a conservative view of the world. Military. Constantly questioning one's loyalty to one's country isn't the best motivation for designing effective battle plans. (Not that there isn't room for liberalism in the policy aspects, there is.)
Most fields go either way, but academia, sciences, and arts have a liberal bent. That's why they are under attack. And because they're a threat to established power, as they are supposed to be.
9
In case you have't noticed, Hollywood has become very risk-averse. The liberalism of its actors and directors is almost in spite of the timidity of its producers.
The migration from Europe was due to a caste system where the .1% owned everything and the peasants suffered generation after generation of poverty whose degree depended on how greedy the landlords were. My ancestors fled the Pale because the Russian nobility thought Jews a convient scapegoat and unleashed the Cossacks. There were never Jewish farmers to make the land productive but there was no shortage of peoples willing to collect the taxes but unfortunately none of them had the literacy to do the job and the breadbasket of the world saw a huge decline in productivity. The monuments to wealth throughout Europe are monuments to the wealth and power of the .1%. America was big and empty and peasant farm workers had a chance to reap some reward for their toil.
After William the Conquerer till the 20th century Ireland was owned by its invaders. There was no famine in Ireland 1845-1852, there was a shortage of potatoes. The stories of the Irish being lazy and dull was true as it would for any group of people who lived on a diet of potatoes and only potatoes. Ireland's food export economy flourished when there were no potatoes. One million died and 2 million were deported in a land where food was denied the poor. With nothing to offer the economy they were loaded onto ships a bounty was paid to get then on ships, their hovels became valuable pasture for the world's .1% and the economy grew it was not an act of God.
We are now Europe trying to satiate the greed of the .1%.
5
I live in the midwest and Moretti and Dr. K are correct. I regularly visit two college towns, Ann Arbor, MI and Madison, WI and they are dynamos of growth, all of it spinning out of their respective universities. And no surprise, both states are controlled by the GOP and have been radically cutting state funding for these schools. In Wisconsin, the GOP just gave an economic incentive package worth billions to Chinese owned Foxcon. You can't make this stuff up......
14
My undergraduate college education could not help but make me a bit more liberal, even at my Catholic college. My favorite quote from a teacher came from a Jesuit priest who said, "Education frees you from the tyranny of your own experience." And that is what my years at an academic institution did. Broadened my mind, enhanced my fund of knowledge, and gave me a much larger perspective on the world. And it fanned the flames of something in me that Donald Trump and the worst of his base are known to lack...intellectual curiosity.
14
@ Not all docs play golf
"Education frees you from the tyranny of your own experience."
What a great quote! Thank you for sharing it.
1
The claim that colleges discriminate against those with conservative viewpoints is proven (i.e. faculty openly admit to doing it), not conjectural.
There has always been a higher proportion of liberals in professorships, but the ratio has been skewing widely over the past 25 years.
But there aren't just a lot of liberal professors now, either. Not everyone on the left is a liberal. Many of the leftist college professors today, especially in the humanities, are illiberal leftists (often avowed Marxists). Political correctness is, in fact, out of control on college campuses. Whatever liberal motivations it may have once had, they have long since been distorted beyond any reasonable sense of liberalism.
So it's not liberals against conservatives that we should be worried about in US colleges today. It's illiberal leftists against both conservatives and liberals.
1
I find the historical representation is a little squirrely to say the least. We really should have a much longer discussion of European migration in general, and anti-Irish sentiments in particular, before we start tying Irish history into conversations about Hillary Clinton, modern education, and wealth inequality. Krugman has overstepped his boundary a bit.
I will agree "Antisemitism springs eternal" though. However, you might mention Native Americans and American blacks first. Both demographics were reluctant immigrants to this nation each in their own way. You might even say Native Americans were reluctant emigrants to the United States but I don't mean to split hairs. Either way, what I'll term "native immigrants" have routinely had their education institutionally and/or geographically suppressed. As a result, historical outcomes are generally less successful than their more easily assimilated European counterparts.
For that matter, you might notice Trump's immigration blacklist conveniently and consistently ignores countries with highly skilled workers who might cluster around great universities. I'm sorry but rural India or China are generally more depraved than almost any urban center in Africa and much of Latin America. You don't hear Trump calling out to end H1B and student visas for Indians and Chinese though. The racism is economically selective.
2
Why is it so difficult to be a little precise while discussing immigration. As Mr. Krugman says scientists and academics have to discuss facts. In fact he criticizes Republicans validly on climate science and economics that they are rejecting facts. So Is it not a fact that legal and illegal immigration are different. I support legal immigration and if congress agrees based on voters choices, by all means let us increase legal immigration levels. But why intentionally mix the two. Were the immigrants from Ireland and Germany illegal based on the rules of the day. It is high time to have a discussion based on facts on the topic of immigration as well, don’t you think?
1
Trump's appeal was based not on "know-how" but "now-how" -- getting it done now. Which cuts to the chase, reducing all complexity, nuance and shades of gray to stark black and white.
So, we got an administration tasked with taking many short cuts, ignoring how the world really works. Which undercuts many of the values gained by knowing how the world does work. Like values for diversity and biodiversity and the resiliency of community of humans and the land.
Driving the teaching of evolution from the schools has aided this taking by the forces of "now-how" and the alien sublimation of all values to the dollar. For what is not to be believed is what is not to be seen. That man is not the end of evolution -- a concept that even the believers of evolution have difficulty in grasping -- has even a lesser chance of catching. Which ultimately leads to the end of evolution. And to the end of man. And finally to the end of the greatest hoax -- this is all for man.
"Now How" greatly lessens our chance for survival. At such a crucial crossroad, the country settled for the no-plan man.
1
You are preaching, unfortunately, to the choir.
While many of us are shamed by each new defilement of our country, our constitution and our way of life offered up by this president and his party, a large minority reap satisfaction.
Who are we that elect such people to represent us?
I will tell you that Trump and his party accurately reflect who we are just as the Know-Nothings reflected us 170 years ago. Until we understand that Trump is not the problem, but only an awful symptom, we will not begin to fix this.
6
Perhaps one could tie this to the Civil War. In the Confederacy, elites ruled in a nearly feudal way and lower classes accepted their place. Labor unrest and advancement occured elsewhere, seen as fomented by immigrants and outsiders. States rights arguments were not just a cover for pro-slavery views, but a buffer against the encroachments of modernity and democracy. It is no accident a demogogue like Huey Long came from the south and threatened FDR's New Deal from within, nor that evangelicals and other primitives were strongest in the south: think of the Stokes trial. In fear, red states revert to God and guns while embracing anyone who promises to take care of them. Hence the support overwhelming given to the empty promises of Trump while the rest of us looked on in horror. Democracy is under assault, and it is as much due to millions who would rather be minions in a feudal order where they knew their place, whether as Christians under an Old Testament God, or in a society where questioning is seen as a disruptive nuisance if not subversive. The tea party remnants model this behavior. To them, the answer to truth is reversion. To 37% of Americans, Trump and the GOP are as comforting as watching the Andy Griffith show. Give me that old time religion. The tax bill is as much about culture as corrupt politics. The two, after all, go hand-in-hand to people who embrace their place in an old order.
452
Tom, well stated. One only has to read the first 150 pages of "Battlecry of Freedom" to see the ignorance and arrogance of the Southern plantation owners who felt that owning factories and working in manufacturing and production was beneath the Southerner's dignity. Their arrogance and ignorance convinced them, that the Confederacy, with 4 million whites and essentially no manufacturing capability could defeat the Union with a population of 21 million and manufacturing capability and a technology based work force. This atmosphere, couple with memory of Sherman's march to the sea, still sticks in the craw of Southerners.
5
Your evocation of the Civil War is certainly apt. It remains a mystery to me why more people have not raised this point. Read "Grant" and you will have that deja vu feeling. The past, as Falkner said, is not dead; it is not even past.
3
All true. But no one would be more horrified by recent developments than Andy Griffith himself, a Democrat and Obama supporter.
2
I was five days in the hospital recently dealing with kidney stones. A big, modern hospital with a world-wide reputation for quality. I never kept score of the number of recent immigrants to this country who treated and took care of me, but there were a lot of them.
4
Look no further than the recent tax bill to find evidence that the GOP is not trying to bring up Red States as much as it is actively trying to harm Blue States and/or educated enclaves in Red States.
The recent tax bill limited the state and local tax (SALT) deductions. This hurts the high-tax (and Democratic) coastal states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The GOP wants to increase funding to the IRS, a reversal of their long-held position, to enforce the SALT limitation if some states try to limit the damage to their citizens with legislation exploiting loopholes in the tax bill.
Initially the tax bill included a provision to require tuition wavers be declared as taxable income. Although removed from the final bill, this would have been devastating to some college students, especially graduate students - and shows the GOP's anti-education mindset.
Add to that the DOJ threats to states and cities that claim "Sanctuary" status, and restrictions on immigration from non-white countries (Trump did not say he wanted more immigrants who were engineers or scientists, he said he wanted more from Norway). Restrictions on immigration will hurt the educated, economically dynamic areas of the country - in other words, areas that vote Democratic.
4
Donald Trump is living in a reality tv world and loving it. The earlier we all realize this, the better for all. To Trump, the job is just one big joke.
3
Professor Krugman references the growing geographical divergence of prosperity within the US after 1980, obviously a key factor in the rise of Trumpism. But he explains the divergence only by describing the importance of university centers and their well-educated no often immigrant populations. Like so many liberals, Krugman fails to focus on the de-industrialization of the heartland and outsourcing of semi-skilled jobs to Asia and Latin America. Not everyone can master the kind of high tech knowledge found at universities - a great many people will always need semi skilled work to survive, and when that is taken away from them either by outsourcing or by the importation of low skilled immigrants, they will not be happy. Moreover, many low or semi skilled American workers cannot be re-trained, as Obama and Clinton promised, and provided with jobs that can support a middle class life.
And these unemployed and underemployed American workers will vote for some demagogue like Trump who promises to give them the jobs now being done by other people. The fact that Trump will never impose the kind of tariffs and restore the kind of union protections that once allowed American blue collar workers to prosper will only make this class even angrier.
3
"...The party that currently controls all three branches of the federal government is increasingly for bigotry and against education... the G.O.P. has rejected the very values that made America great."
The GOP like their corporate benefactors/idols are only interested in short term gains. Even a know-nothing should be able to figure out that if the consumers cannot afford to consume, the whole house of cards collapses. Or they just don't care. Which is scarier?
5
The damage done will be almost impossible to recover from. America will be behind all it's major competitors on levels of education, and technological capability. Even now, Silicon Valley and other major technology hubs have to import a large number of their expertise.
The current trajectory is towards moving out of the ranks of developed nations, and into the third world, at least for many regions of America.
3
Anxious to read a piece by ‘Economist’ Krugman on how Trump & Republicans in less than one year managed to increase GDP substantially, drive down unemployment, increase consumer spending & confidence, propel the stock market (you gotta see my 401K).
Obviously if all this happened under a Democrat (which it never could) PK would be giving them all the credit.
2
What's being termed 'populism' on both sides Atlantic (UK: 'people in this country have had enough of experts') is play on insecurities of an increasingly changing, complex, confusing world. 'Gimme that old time religion' is an understandable reflex. Uniiversities are unsettling, not just for their spread of knowledge and understanding, but their practice of critical thinking and discussion. The many pseudo democracies around the world can be identified by their opposition to that practice.
Prussia, not the US, led the world in universal basic education.
1
All learning is a conspiracy for the ignorant, a fraternity of the intellect to which they have no access and which seems to despise them. Science threatens to make earlier accounts of creation and miracles quaint literary and historical relics. It offers no central position for human beings in a divine plan in which believers triumph over mortality and have special protection. The tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, belief systems, and ethnicity implies that there is no privileged position for a particular racial and religious group. Trump's appeal is to the frightened and resentful who believe they are being denied (as Trump's forerunner, Mussolini, would have put it) their "place in the sun." Republican policies since Reagan's election in 1980 have steadily waged war against social democracy and the state as the defender of the public good - to the point where "liberal" and "progressive" have become terms of abuse. The result is the rise of inequality and the empowerment of billionaires who buy politicians and of the ignorant who vote for them, schooled by Fox News, fundamentalists and single-issue lobbies, and the professional spewers of rage on the right. Of course, Putin's massive intervention in 2016 also probably helped put Trump in the position for which he is so obviously unfit. At the margin, he only got an electoral college majority in three swing states in which his winning margin was less than 80,000.
3
Good to see someone finally point out why the conservative attacks on universities are so persistent and vociferous. Yes, there are fewer conservatives than liberals on college faculties for the very reasons Dr. Krugman cites. But keep in mind how few socialists you will find in university business schools. That's where the status quo prevails, and it's also where you'll find enclaves of conservatives in all senses of the word. If our universities ever amount a consistent and critical attack on capitalism, it won't come from the business departments, which remain highly resistant to the kind of self-review and introspection that is supposed to prevail in higher education.
1
Great article. The only thing that I would add is that the "Know Nothings" have turned to the most productive regions in order to feast on their productivity, having scorched the earth everywhere else in the USA. Inequality was running short on pockets to pick.
3
Thank you, Professor K!
In the not too distant future, historians will be unable to resist comparing the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump, and the historic battle for the American soul that these two men represent.
I agree with you that education, optimism, openness to new ideas, and opportunities (in education, art, commerce, science, engineering, etc..) for anyone willing to invest the necessary energy, is what makes America great and attracts immigrants from other nations.
As a stark contrast, our current government is run by and funded by ignorant, fearful white men who are willing to sacrifice our future to maintain the status quo, if not establish outright oligarchy. It is a disgraceful era for our country that I pray will end with the mid-term elections later this year.
5
Given your apparent agreement with Moretti that innovation hubs are thriving and manufacturing hubs are hemorrhaging population, talent, and capital, what do you propose we do?
You write, "Clearly we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely," but you fail to offer any such policies, and, frankly, your columns over the years have mostly seemed to say, 'it's their own fault so let them learn to live with it.'
We can't all move to San Francisco. We have roots. And even if we didn't, there isn't enough housing in SF or Boston for the people already there: there certainly wouldn't be affordable homes for everyone from Flint, much less everyone from Detroit, if they chose to move there.
So we need those "policies" you referred to. Could we maybe start by acknowledging that making products here would cut into the record profits importers and distributors like Apple and Walmart are enjoying, but it wouldn't really raise prices all that much, and it would make life infinitely less stressful for people in places so threatened by economic ruin that they've turned to those modern day know nothings?
2
Tell me, Mr Krugman, just how large scale European immigration benefitted the America’s First Nations. Hey, but who cares about a little genocide here and there if it benefits the economic prospects of one group at the expense of another, eh?
Of course the great and the good favour immigration. They get to eat at quaint, little, ethnic restaurants that are full of character — and such good value! Because they are busy, busy people, they get to hire cheap help to look after the kids, the laundry, the yard and all the other dull chores that would otherwise distract them from their busy, important lives.
One thing that a Nobel Laureate in economics might be expected to do is to explain to the economically illiterate why the concept of an absolute ‘labour shortage’, irrespective of pay and working conditions, in a given local market, is an economic myth invented by employers who, naturally, want to pay their workers as little as possible and who wring their hands, therefore, at the prospect of having to increase wages or improve working conditions dramatically in order to increase the supply of labour.
2
Conservatives tell me that liberals know nothing: No idea how to get oil out of the ground or seabed, no idea how to turn it into electricity, no idea how to get goods to market at a price that consumers can afford, etc. Others have told me that it's naive of liberals not to realize that if the world were going to be much better than it is, then it would already be that way. They think of themselves as realists, and liberals as soft-headed. It might be better if we could all see things in shades of grey rather than in black and white. But that would mean compromise, and compromise doesn't seem to win elections. So there we are.
I believe the more one knows about local, national and worldwide events, the more they know about how our government works (the inside horsetrading, the backroom deals, the kickbacks and promises, and back stabbings, etc,), the more likely one is to lean left. Hence journalists, educators and others whose business is to be well informed are perceived as liberals, particularly by the uninformed.
The fact that uneducated conservative parents so often want nothing more than for their children to become well educated has always struck me as extreme irony. Could it be that all they really want is for their children to make more money than they do? Do they think institutions of higher education are merely vocational trade schools?
2
I often wonder how anyone whose ancestors came here during the migrations of the mid 19th and early 20th centuries can fail to be repelled by the current Know Nothingism knowing the vilification that their grandparents or parents endured when they arrived. There seem to be two possibilities: 1) the third and fourth generation ethnic Americans simply are ignorant of how their ancestors were treated or, more horrifying, 2) the seeds of prejudice came with the migrants themselves insofar as at least some of them were never drawn to this country for its openness; rather their project in migrating (as the novelist Dennis Lehane has suggested in his novel "The Given Day") was to make sure that their last countryman was comfortably seated at the table "before the doors to the room were pulled shut." While I would prefer to think that the former explanation is correct and a little education would help cure us, I fear the persistence of Know Nothingism in this country makes the latter possibility plausible.
I fear that for many Republican politicians, the Know Nothing position is a well-considered strategy. I don't for one minute think they all are ill informed enough to deny that evolutionary processes have driven the development of life on Earth, or that nearly doubling the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere will cause significant changes in our climate that will result in huge societal disruption and ultimately the death of a significant fraction of the Earths population. The true horror is that they want, for their own short term gain, to manipulate the electorate who do not understand these issues to avoid addressing the critical issue of climate change. I hope there will be an accounting for this so we can pull together to try to make the world habitable for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I have been completely shocked by the total lack of ethics on the part of our political class - I am not holding my breath.
"When the more or less official position of your party is that climate change is a hoax and evolution never happened, you won’t get much support from people who take evidence seriously."
Mr. Krugman, there is indeed real time documentation that the earth is 'warming'. There is nothing even close to that regarding evolution. Please don't allow the desire for it to be true to cloud how far from 'true' it actually is.
I must ask that Mr Krugman return to writing about serious economic issues. My I request columns on the future of Chna's economy, his outlook on bitcoins, the impact of the cyber economy of the basic rules of the traditional economy.
I am getting real tired of the anti Trump thing.
1
He cannot.
Because the economy is booming, people are working, and deregulation & tax cuts are the reason.
If he addressed that he’d then have to give credit to (Gulp) T R U M P!
1
The majority of Republicans are against education because they are fearful their children will learn how to think. I am a clear of example of this. Raised by a Republican father I was taught to believe everything he said regarding politics and social issues. Only when I obtained my PhD in the basic sciences and encountered a multitude of diverse thought and cultures did I actually begin my educational journey. Until my father died he and I argued incessantly about these issues; neither probably changing the other's mind. Education teaches you how to think and clearly the Republicans don't want you to do anything so radical.
Well said, as always. The historical perspective was really useful. The racist, anti-immigrant strain is a fault in the human being that is only overcome by exposure to other races, a good education, and sound economic conditions.
The inequality from blindly following Reaganism from 1981-2008 just makes people more prone to blaming others. Obama set the right path with tax hikes on the rich and subsidies for healthcare for 20 million people. We have to expand this concept to higher education (subsidies, not debt for students). The more educated we are, the less vulnerable to demagogues we will be.
The political parties also have to set standards so people like Trump don't get on the ballot. Requiring 10 years of tax returns is a good start.
"Know-Nothings for the 21st Century".
For a second there, I thought he was referring to economists.
"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely."
As noted in the column, things were fine "until around 1980..." Ever since then globalization has hollowed out the workforce, geographically and structurally, not just here, but across the developed world.
It took economists 32 years to notice, and for one of them to write a book suggesting that perhaps there might be a problem. That's at least 12 years into the opioid epidemic and almost two decades into the crystal meth crisis. And just three years before the average life expectancy of middle aged white men began to actually decline. Stunning.
People without a PhD in Economics argue, rightly in the view of most people who live not in an Ivory Tower bubble, but in the real world, that the incompetence of economists is now destabilizing the entire developed world.
Anti-immigrant ignorance is just the beginning of a very dark period in history that we are now entering as a result.
If only an economist with a PhD from a fine Ivy League university had written a book about it, say, sometime around 1995, Trump would not be President, and the developed world would not be in crisis and on a trajectory towards violent unrest.
Economists have an awful lot to answer for, and the day of reckoning is rapidly approaching.
Oh, where to start? Let's begin here: "The sad thing is that America is currently ruled by people who fit both definitions." Dr. Krugman, there is no one who "rules" America, and there has not been since Great Britain gave up and went home in 1781. Yes, it's just a word, perhaps chosen for impact, but it can be taken as a possible window into the soul of this editorial.
Then there is the complete lack of objective support for "a bunch" of wild pronouncements (except for a statistic regarding Trump-Clinton county contributions to GDP that is just raw data). Unsupported opinions are the lifeblood of editorials, and this piece has a heart that throbs strongly.
Finally, Dr. Krugman violates the fundamental law of Americanism: we are all individuals, we are to be judged and treated as distinct humans, that judgements about individuals based on group identity are antithetical to the purpose of America, and that persistent violation of this law reveals the observer as being prone to missing the most important points.
As a conservative undergraduate student, I have heard plenty of ignorance being spouted by professors and students who claim to be liberals. I won't bore you with the details; it is commonplace. Nonetheless, I would NOT conclude that liberals can't think, only that I've seen some liberals who can't think.
But realizing that this editorial is specifically intended to elicit this kind of response, I can only smile wryly at myself for taking the bait.
I seem to remember an intelligent conservative named William F. Buckley, also Leo Strauss, and Reinhold Neibuhr. Those were really smart guys. The modern conservative movement sold its soul by joining with segregationists,evangelical Christians, and Libertarians to form an unholy alliance. The evangelicals provided the gullible foot soldiers and the Koch brothers provided the money for all the Right-wing think tanks and libertarian propaganda. The whole edifice is an empty shell with no intellectual content, held together with fossil fuel money and religious gullibility. The lights are on, but nobody's home.
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Thank you Mr Krugman, for describing the current situation so elegantly. Most of us "liberals" already know this, but didn't quite have the words to express it so matter-of-factly. This article provides us with an 'elevator speech' to defend 'liberalism' against those who call it elitist or insensitive or living in a bubble.
The quotes around the word 'liberal' are due to, of course, the fact that the policies many Democrats support are not especially liberal -- just mainstream, common sense, and moral.
"Remarkably, a clear majority of Republicans now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on America."
Republican's new slogan for the acronym- R.I.F. (Reading Is Fundamental);
"R.I.F. (Reading Is Failure)."
Excellent column and if anything, understates the problem. I see nothing but contempt for science, critical things, and evidence-based decision and policy making from Republicans. As a university science professor, let me attest to Mr. Krugman's description: there are very few Republicans among us – the Republican Party has abandoned us, not visa versa. The Republican Party is indeed the modern Know-Nothing Party.
Trump is particularly contemptuous of science– a year into his administration the office of White House science advisor remains vacant.
I hear Dr. Krugman loud and clear. It is ridiculous when columnists or academics suggest that we need to give conservative (a loaded word to start with) policy equal time on campuses. Part of education is the evaluation of poor arguments. When Republican policy is not based on evidence, how can that be celebrated? How can we allow it to have an equal say? We can't. One of the Godfathers of the modern Know-Nothings is Rush Limbaugh, who has preached forever the concept of "you know what is right." It has become modern Republican orthodoxy. Republicans don't think we need books or science because everything is based on common sense. If it is cold, there must be no global warming. Remember when Republican Senator Jim Inhofe brought snow into the Senate chamber? It is no wonder the modern Republicans have embraced Trump. He thinks just like them. He doesn't believe in reading or research. He just does everything by the gut and hopes for the best. Well, unfortunately, most Americans did not get a small loan of a million dollars from their fathers in order to buffer the pain of all the bad calls in their lives.
I wish we could do more than just agree with you, Dr. Krugman, and wring our hands. Outside of voting in the mid-term elections, what actions do we need to take?
I, for one, want to DO SOMETHING!!!
Almost every Trump voter I'm familiar with, either has or has had, a rather high income. Almost all are men & women of action, with even the low income losers among them having had their chances at long term solvency.
The remarkable thing with the retired among them is their complete disdain for the conditions which enabled their monetary success & comfortable assured retirement, that is, a perpetuation of union membership as skilled or unskilled labor or a productive high income society, that is, clientele & customers if as businessmen or professionals. They've now got theirs & good luck to everyone else including struggling youth.
Along with the income property & high value personal residences, most have investment portfolios & everyone knows what corporations think about labor costs, environmental restriction & taxation. They should be called Knew Somethings.
But hey, we've got Silicon Valley, right?
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"Know-Nothings for the 21st Century". i thought economists were the biggest know-nothings. also, the biggest predict-nothing-correctly. as the economistv and the philosopher of science said:
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." - John Kenneth Galbraith
"Prayer may not be very efficient when compared to celestial mechanics, but it surely holds its own vis-a-vis some parts of economics." - Paul Feyerabend
"...for this isn’t just about Donald Trump, it’s about a whole [Republican] party..."
The We Proudly Know Nothing Party has been evolving since before the ascension of Trump. Indeed, Trump is a result. So was the presidency of George W. Bush. For all the mess, the useless, destructive wars, it has been successful; a handful of fabulous wealthy people became fabulously more wealthy.
Mission accomplished.
The problem is that the Law of Diminishing Returns quickly applies with an uneducated, unskilled populace. The result? Everyone is poor.
Nov. 6, 2018 is shaping up to be the most consequential day in modern American history.
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Although there's a great deal of truth in this column, it's important not to assume that all anti-immigration sentiment is fueled by bigotry. As the column points out, the areas that are struggling economically are where the anti-immigrant fears are strongest.
The problem with viewing the world in this stark good vs. evil fashion is that it tends to blind progressives to the obvious strategic nuances that Republicans are so good at exploiting.
For example, the Democrats have some leverage in regard to avoiding a government shut-down. Although the DACA youngsters deserve to be allowed to stay (and be granted citizenship because, let's face it, they are Americans), this is the wrong issue for the Democrats to fall on their sword over. The CHIP program, which provides health insurance to poor American children, and which Republicans are dragging their feet on, is such an issue. There are many moderates who don't mind the DACA youngsters staying, but probably don't want to see the American government shut down to benefit people who are in the country illegally. But everyone wants poor American children to have health insurance.
So which of these issues are the Democrats threatening to shut down the government over? You already know.
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Democrats and liberals continue to overestimate the role of reason in human decision-making and underestimate the role of negative human emotions, such as fear and jealousy.
Know-nothingness will continue to dominate politically and culturallly in many quarters of this country until these fundamental human emotions are acknowledged and addressed.
Nobel prize winner in Economics: Paul Krugman is all wrong on economics so he's branching out. If this was America in the 1800's you'd be right in what you opine, however, in 2018 we need smart knowledge workers. Not illiterate, unskilled workers which sadly the US has plenty of native born - no need to import. Trump is working to rationalize a broken immigration system so we can get the highly educated immigrants we need rather than the extended family from some hole-in-the-wall country or worse.
The Republican party does not have a monopoly on know-nothing voters. Democrats have theirs, as well. Fact is, without the know-nothing vote, neither party can win a national election.
"Until around 1980, America seemed on the path toward broadly spread prosperity, with poor regions like the Deep South rapidly catching up with the rest. Since then, however, the gaps have widened again, with incomes in some parts of the nation surging while other parts fall behind."
Let's see now....What happened in 1980? Oh, yeah...now I remember: the Reagan Revolution!
More than once when thinking about what Trump and his Republican toadies are doing to this country, I've found myself thinking about Abraham Lincoln. What follows is a modified quote from his famous 'house divided' speech made in Springfield, Illinois in 1858. My modifications are bracketed.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this [society] cannot endure, permanently, half [bigoted, hateful, fearful and willfully ignorant] and half [willing to genuinely address those things that keep the segments of society apart]. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of [division] will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become [permanently embedded] in all the States, [red] as well as [blue] — [liberal] as well as [conservative]."
Lincoln then was talking about slavery, but we would do well to take his words to heart, for in a sense we are talking about a choice between being having our long-held American ideals enslaved by their antithesis or ensuring that those ideals are free to continue to making this country as great as it can be.
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Apologies, I meant to address Dr. Krugman.
Interesting essay. What is also disturbing is that those who have surrounded our Know Nothing - know nothing- President, may know, but pretend not to. Omission and silence is very destructive.
Liberals have done a terrible job of selling knowledge & education. We have also done a bad job of taking care of the forgotten men & women who find themselves in one mill towns that have been shut down with collapsed home prices and no prospects.
We have also done a poor job of rebuilding infrastructure.
What cons have done well is kill unions and steal labors 1/2 of productivity. The two things are linked.
Also, cons have financialized our economy and when that happens GDP growth slows. CEOs have many choices of what to do with profits. M&A, Lobbying to cut taxes, stock buybacks & dividends do not grow GDP. With an economy driven by 70% consumer spending this is short sighted.
We need to take our country back to save it from cons.
In 1850s Massachusetts, the Know Nothings took over the State House and the City of Boston almost overnight. Not only were new immigrants scorned, but citizens who had been naturalized decades before were dismissed from municipal jobs because of their “nativity.” But the real source of long term power was the ballot box, so the Know Nothings attempted to deny federal voting rights to naturalized citizens. The Know Nothings proposed a 21 year wait for a naturalized immigrant to vote, since an American born baby boy had to wait 21 years before he could vote. Today our attention is on the ugly language and noise, but we should vigilantly monitor attempts to restrict voting rights and access.
The politics of the 1850s changed dramatically after the Congress was divided by the secession and the civil war. Long lasting investments were made in the concept of land-grant colleges, launching of the Transcontinental Railroad, and homesteading. These acts Congress with goals of collective action for the public good have paid handsome returns for the real American economic success.
Republican Teddy Roosevelt followed Lincoln with the investment in completing the Panama Canal with great benefits to both the US and global economy. Republican Dwight Eisenhower, followed the huge advances by FDR's creation of the single most advanced public policy in our history by the creation of Social Security Insurance, the Atomic-bomb/TVA, and western water, by spearheading the Interstate Highway Act that no one will dispute that this network created the modern fossil energy economy and made it possible for the post-WWII economy and society to flourish and reach the highest average standard of living and life expectancy in the history of the World.
With the Viet-Nam War and oil spikes of the 1970's, the GOP began to change, America's growth slowed, the financial sector flourished, and the nature of government itself changed. Wealth began to concentrate, the government was seen as the problem and we seem to have lost the will to invest in a collective effort.
We now know that fossil fuels are finite and they are harming our health and the environment and the GOP is in denial.
1
I believe it is possible to elect a Congress that will work on the actual problems that the country and the world faces.
Dr. K mentioned climate change but the policy response to climate change is probably the most difficult and underreported challenge of our time. It will require a lot of very heavy policy lifting to meet the challenge of creating an energy source to replace fossil fuels that will meet the needs and economic demands of the modern world. I work with Dr. James Powell and others to bring attention to this issue.
It won't be easy. Without a major international effort to create a new source of energy (Powell and I think Maglev launched solar satellites to geosynchronous orbit could produce very cheap electricity and make the transition much smoother) the World is headed for a heap of trouble. Clearly, development of a new, non-fossil energy source should be a high priority of the international community and our own government.
I also developing superconducting Maglev to complement our existing truck and auto interstate highway system would be a tremendous benefit to the economy. (see www.magneticglide.com for concept).
It is incredible to me that Republicans now think that college education and education in general is a negative thing for America. The best country in the World will be the country with the best educated citizens, the healthiest citizens, and the best infrastructure. Uneducated and unhealthy citizens are a drag on the entire country. The citizens ARE the country. Anybody should be able to understand this. Education gives a person the chance to change their lives. For the sake of America, please vote, people. VOTE!
It's a great question to ask: if we hadn't been generous to those "huddled masses," where would we be now
Of course, I am deeply concern about this trend to demonize education. Education has been the key to development and to social mobility in democratic countries. Totalitarian regimes, on the other hand, thrive in censorship and suppression of rational thinking; they thrive on conspiracy theories and promote fear.
The more I see Trump, the more I see all the Chavez of the world. Power and winning at any price. Whatever it takes: right or left; Republican or Democrat; God or the devil. The people do not matter. Even the ones that do not come from "holes", are white and, voted for Trump.
At the beginning of the Trump term, many writers said that corruption and incompetence would be his undoing before 2020.
We have seen plenty of incompetence by this administration and to use a Trump metric, perhaps the most incompetent of “any administration in our history.”
But incompetence is most likely not an impeachable offense.
On the other hand, corruption is very impeachable, made even more possible if somehow Democrats make this a wave election and Robert Mueller’s team can lay out the case in a manner that seems intuitive to the average person.
I’m not sure our institutions are quite resilient enough to wait until 2021 before we get a new president. With a Know-Nothing Congress and a Know-Nothing Administration, 3 more years could be too late.
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You'll survive. Many of us felt the same way for the last 8 years and we made it. Meanwhile, enjoy the burgeoning economy, job growth and getting to retain more of the money you made due to the tax cuts. I'm doing much better and look forward to more of it over the next 7 years.
kwc57, the economy improved faster and longer "for the last 8 years" than so far that the one year which was mostly on the previous president's budget. Even the stock market under Obama's first year went up at a faster rate than Trump's first year. So why didn't you enjoy Obama again?
1
JT...Who says there will be a new President in 2021? Trump is hovering right around 40%. Only slightly down from his norms. Contrary to the lies being spewed by Morning Jerk, who keeps saying, Trump is at 31, 32, 33%. This after what could be charitably called, a rough first year.
Can you imagine how much higher he will soar after a few good weeks or months? Heck, if he would stop the idiotic tweeting, which will never happen, he could pick up 3-4 points overnight. Tweets aside, when you add in the "hidden Trump vote", which clearly exists, any guarantees that democrats think they have about 2020 are completely delusional.
If the democrats pick another dud, we are looking at Trump II. Just think about how large that inaugural crowd will be! Yuuuge.
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Its much easier to use and trick the poorly educated. You can frighten them with fairy tales, you can motivate them with mysticism. You can convince them they are not worthy of being treated like equal humans. But most importantly you can tell them up is down and black is white. Something the GOP has turned into an art form in the last 20 years. You wonder why the GOP rank and file vote against their own self interest? Dr. Krugman has called out the answer.
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mj, it is not quite so simple. 96% of black Americans voted for Obama. Only 8% voted for Trump. But, the unemployment rate of African Americans is lower now under Trump than it ever was under Obama.
It is not JUST Trump voters who ignore their own interests. And ignorance is not confined to Republican voters.
To pursue truth one must give up partisanship. I am pessimistic that this will happen at the NYT.
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Thank you for this response, I absolutely agree..
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The uneducated probably don't even follow the news, nor could they interpret a threat by this "know nothing administration" if it bit them on the subpoena. All they know is, they like "Trump being Trump." Reminds them of their families.
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Krugman hits on so many things here, but the most important is the role of education in building a strong nation and the role of the right in subjugating it.
A strong nation can survive the truth. We can live with the knowledge that our fore-fathers were not universally glowing in the rays from the light of an approving God. We can survive knowing that our forebears enslaved people, pillaged the land for resources, marched people off in genocidal relocations. We can survive knowing that history wasn't all about winning wars and cutting cherry trees.
A strong nation can recognize that short term profits may cause long term damage, and choose to conserve the resource at lower profit margins. A strong nation can figure out how to teach science in the face hardcore faith and hardcore greed. A strong nation can protect its people from theocracy and predatory capitalism
Our Know Nothings are using us, using our prejudices, beliefs, and moral judgements against us, to maximize their own wealth in the short term. We are being strip mined, and left as slag heap. Education might show us that truth, so it is best to fight it. And remain a strong nation.
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I agree with Cathy above, and none of these current problems and future issues of this nation will be addressed until the entire state of our education system is addressed. You cannot have a strong, powerful, great nation if your citizens are not educated. Ours are not. Of civilized, technological societies, ours has the lowest in high school and college graduation rates. For what is supposed to be the wealthiest nation in the world, our citizens should be offered the best education, equally to all citizens through federal tax dollars (through huge corporate wealth, etc) -- not based solely by state/local taxes and zip code-- as the wealthiest, who choose, will send their children to private schools, regardless. But, the same quality of education needs provided in Bethesda, MD, Ridgefield, CT, Northbrook, IL as the inner city schools of Philadelphia, NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, etc., as well rural areas of this country. Additionally, the cost of higher education is absolute insanity and two-year programs and technical schools need to be revamped to meet current needs. But within all these programs, students need to learn to function in society with basic skills and understanding of finance, laws, civics, government, politics, as well as social skills. This is not happening. This will never produce a great nation. And this I believe is the motive of Bannon and his friends in order to control society and destroy democracy through the "know-nothings."
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A knowledgeable & educated public is the cornerstone of any democracy. The more the right can degrade both the knowledge & critical thinking capabilities of the masses, the more vulnerable we become to budding tyrants (like Trump) who can bypass the higher brain functions which deal with reason & facts & appeal to the base emotions in the oldest part of the brain, the amygdala, where fear, anxiety, hatred, fight-or-flight, need for a strong leader, and other purely emotional characteristics are centered.
So many of us are prey to Trump's histrionic bombast (as they were to Bush's similar appeals about invading Iraq). Knowledge, education, training in critical thinking, & recognizing formal & informal logical fallacies are the only to rebuild our dying democracy.
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Wow! Cathy, how on target!
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No wonder the GOP is still hanging onto Trump. In 2016 there was widespread fear that they would suffer electoral defeat on all fronts. Thanks to Russian meddling Republicans now control the White House and Congress.
Recent history has been seeing a decline of the party - which makes up of the big-business wing and the socially-conservative populist base. The two camps are deeply divided. The rise of the Tea Party had once again turned the GOP into an anti-immigration, anti-science, Know-nothing party.
Conservatives still dwell on the past and aren't keen on investing in human resources, because they fear that educated people will reject their "orthodoxies." It's alarming that "a clear majority of Republicans now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on America." The budget reveals their malicious design - deep cut to education, public services etc - to keep ordinary Americans under their thumbs.
Trump will also end up like Millard Fillmore – an unmemorable man with a memorable name. The 13rd president ran again in 1856 as the candidate of the Know-Nothing party (aka the American Party) and lost to James Buchanan. It remains to be seen whether Trump will beat Fillimore and top the lists of America's worst presidents.
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"Clearly, we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely." I grew up in the 60s in a poor, rural part of Illinois. My parents did not have college degrees. My father was a union coal miner and veteran. The entire region around us was conservative and "red-necked." But my parents were liberals who always voted Democratic and preached inclusiveness. They scrimped and scraped and borrowed for my brother and I to go to college. We went to the U of I because it was the only place we could afford. A great land grant institution. What is different about this story than what we have now? First, my parents grew up under FDR and believed in the New Deal because it saved their poor families. Second, union membership. Third, government sponsored college loans and universities that were considered to be "shining cities on a hill." Getting into and going to college were dreams come true for us and changed our lives. Fourth, the Great Society policies of that era. The GOP of today clearly values none of these things. This is the root of our problems.
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What a wonderful story! It’s a great example of what the role of government can and should be. You were fortunate to have such intelligent parents.
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I remember some of the student loan programs being called “National Defense Loans”, later called National Direct. My loans, then from the early 1970’s, were at a federally sponsored rate of 3%. Not so bad, as it allowed me to go to a private Jesuit institution in Boston, foregoing the N.Y. Regents scholarship to a state college upstate (good, but I really appreciate the education provided by the Jesuits)
I also remember the TV ads saying “To get a good job, get a good education”.
But that was a time when we valued a good education.
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"we need policies to spread the benefits of growth and innovation more widely"
Inequality has actually been growing since the late 60's, as shown by Gini coefficient and other measures, and this is obviously correlated with the prevalence of conservative economic policies in both parties. This is not simply a rural-urban divide - there are plenty of poor people in cities. When are self-described liberal economists such as Krugman going to step up and devise and support policies which could reduce inequality? Economic policy is where a substantial majority could be attained, as many Republican and Independents are apparently fed up with the big-money Republican establishment, as well as the Democratic establishment. Republicans have retained power by concentrating on "social" issues, especially racism, and fighting the political battle on these lines is playing into their hands.
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@skeptonomist Tennessee
"When are self-described liberal economists such as Krugman going to step up and devise and support policies which could reduce inequality?
You have obviously never read any of Krugman's books or indeed any others by "liberal economists" by the sound of it.
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Correct, the know nothings of both sorts are in charge and in addition to knowing nothing, they are doing nothing in Congress. Perhaps that is just as well, the less they do, the less harm to the country. On the other point, my wife and I are the detested elites, college educated scientists. We knew a few conservative scientists but not many and most of them were Reagan style republicans who no longer can stomach the current anti intellectual republican party. When one works with facts every day for your entire career, you wonder about those who reject facts in favor of belief. Further, when we were invited to teach a class at various colleges, the whole canard about political indoctrination was laughable. We were teaching science and politics never entered the conversation either for us or the students. Science departments at universities are like that. A chemical reaction or physics principle or biological pathway isn't a political idea.
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" A chemical reaction or physics principle or biological pathway [or ecological fact or evo-devo fact or societal fact or etc. fact] isn't a political idea."
Yes it is if it somehow contradicts the "word of God" or the ideology or philosophical foundations of the current GOP.
And it especially is if it undermines the GOP propaganda narrative designed to reel in voters by playing to emotions, fears, suppositions, and ingrained cultural imperatives.
In your classrooms perhaps the battles are not evident .. but in the environment in which that classroom exists battles are fiercely waged.
I do feel you get that point and recognize the battles we are in - and I do get your statement's drift.
But the point of the article was the real danger the GOP poses to intellectual honesty and enrichment and I for one don't want to lose sight of the forest for the trees. I just want to be clear.
In the Pacific Islands there's something called the "tall grass syndrome" in which people even out the differences between their situations by forcefully redistributing goods that one person may have and another not. This works on small islands with egalitarian social structures but not in a large country like the US.
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That Mrs. Clinton lost in almost every county that did not include an urban center is evidence in support of Mr. Krugman's thesis. However, it is also evidence that a great many people are not willing to give up their way of life by moving from the non-urban areas in which they have deep roots - family and friends - in order to find jobs that don't pay very well and which have no promise of longevity. If Democrats hope to attract voters from those counties, they must have candidates and a platform that do not cater only to the elites of our nation, but also to the millions of Americans who are not willing to sell their souls "to the company store."
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In reply to JP: You yearn for a society that allows you to remain in a rural area where you have family and friends and yet still get a proportional fraction of the benefits of the US economy. In particular you don't want to sell your soul "to the company store". Laudable goals, but how do you propose to accomplish them? Most of your neighbors, as you point out, think that voting Republican will help. How has the GOP been treating rural areas this year? A big tax cut for wealthy city dwellers and, for you, higher costs for medical care and education. Oh, yes, infrastructure. The GOP has big plans to support this by extensive privatization. Big corporations will build new roads, bridges, and dams and then make the users pay fees, year after year. Of course they will build them where they will be most profitable, in and between the cities. A new level 1 trauma center in a county with no urban centers? Not profitable, especially if many of the county residents have inadequate medical insurance.
OK, JP, suppose you weren't thinking of those neighbors, but rather a group of people who want something much more egalitarian than either the GOP or the Democratic Party. You can form a new progressive party and transform rural politics. If the US were a parliamentary democracy, perhaps this might work. However, the US has a two-party winner-take-all system. Most likely your efforts would simply reinforce GOP dominance of rural politics.
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I am a liberal Democrat, who supported Bernie Sanders, and voted reluctantly for Clinton. My point was that the Democratic leaders have taken on a elitist air - Ivy league "liberals" who see college as the salvation of the masses - even though there is little evidence to support that view. I want to support small - really small- business, provide universal health care and living wages for people where they are. Democrats, such as me, want to think outside the box in order to find ways to meet the aspirations of working people, not just the ambitions of people who want everyone to be just like them.
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Thank you JP for clarifying your position. However, I would suggest that you need to think very carefully about why your views of Clinton align so closely with the GOP effort to brand her in negative terms. This GOP seems to follow Trump's tendency to project their suspected weaknesses on their opponents. To me it seems no coincidence that the alternative to Trump would be cast by the GOP as a big-business elitist who lines her own pockets with kickbacks from the ultra-wealthy.
I would also take slight exception to the idea that higher education is all elitist Ivy-League nonsense. Running a small farm these days can benefit a lot from specialized higher education. Do you think that Betsy DeVos has the best interests in mind of small farmers and businesspeople who want to take a few courses at a community college?
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Mr. Krugman, I wonder whether you comprehend the depth of the crisis you have mentioned. "[T]he 2016 election largely pitted these rising regions against those left behind, which is why counties carried by Hillary Clinton, who won only a narrow majority of the popular vote, account for a remarkable 64 percent of U.S. G.D.P., almost twice as much as Trump counties."
There are about 3,100 counties in the United States. Clinton won roughly 500 counties including 88 of the 100 with the largest population. Trump won about 2,500 counties. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.5 million due largely to her success in 88 of the 100 largest counties. In the 3,000 smaller counties, Clinton lost by about 11.5 million votes.
That's a crisis.
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Very enlightening. But if you think the Liberal/Progressive wing of the Democrat party will moderate its socialist, anti-business, open-borders stance in order to appeal to more voters, get real. Their arrogance is staggering--because they are convinced they know far better what is good for America, than its own citizens do.
But in the end...their arrogance is a positive thing for our country--and the reason we have a pro-business president in the White House--for they would rather preserve their unerringly dogmatism than win elections. This is despite the fact that they have been completely voted out of power at every level of government.
Jesse, hopefully the Democratic Party will find the words needed to communicate voters in 2500 counties Trump carried. Since Trump was elected he has virtually abandoned the ordinary voters in favor of tax cuts for the oligarchs.
The "crisis " is that we have the EC by which trump won; and that we have an ec which is just a rubber stamp, giving the majority of us a monster.
We, as a nation, probably have to expand the idea of the haves the the have-nots. Is it money? Of course. But maybe it's also education. There is a correlation, also of course. Will it change? Will education be more equally distributed? I agree with you, Paul Krugman. Perhaps not. What makes it tougher to achieve is the fact the one of our two major political parties depends upon the lesser educated. Donald Trump put it best -- "I love the poorly educated."
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The Know Nothings were the US branch of a movement begun in the UK by the Luddites who I rebelled against increasing automation in textile mills that ate up jobs. Luddites were first generation from the countryside and when the tide went back out they found there was no place to return to, hence they rioted. The cure for Ludditism and Know Nothingism is diffusion of the disruptive innovations that come from the academic-industrial complex. In the 19th century it took decades to spread rail, telegraph, and the benefits of organic chemistry to the society. But they resulted in the industries and jobs that carried us well into the 20th century. It’s again time for big diffusion but it’s hard to do with a movement I’d call Ameri-can’t dominating. We need a movement called America-can.
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This is factually incorrect. Luddites were artisan weavers threatened by the introduction of large textile mills. Know-Nothings were American "Nativists" opposed to Irish and German immigration. Nothing links the two very different movements.
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I've thought for a while that the US seemed to be splitting into two distinct camps - those states/regions that are wealthy, well educated, healthy and provide a good quality of life, and others that rival developing countries with regards to income and education gaps, maternal mortality, and respect and protection of workers, spending on the arts, etc.. As Democrats look to further expand the rights of their states to innovate and implement forward looking policies, it will be interesting to see how the gap between these two types of places in the US widens. As this happens, it will be interesting to track inter-state migration to see what trends emerge with regards to people seeking better lives for themselves.
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California provides many examples of living in a developing country, with some of the highest levels of poverty, segregation and inequality in the country. Democrats almost everywhere in their urban centers lead the country in the number of those in poverty, living in segregation and dealing with violence, along a shrinking middle class. One needs to get out of their bubble chambers in order to see the real picture across the country as the problems are in areas held by both parries but concentrated in the case of Democrats due to their strongholds being urban areas.
"But one way to think of Trumpism is as an attempt to narrow regional disparities, not by bringing the lagging regions up, but by cutting the growing regions down. For that’s what attacks on education and immigration, key drivers of the new economy’s success stories, would do."
I've never seen such a naked attempt to exact economic punishments on states with growing centers of scientific excellence. You certainly see it in the recently passed tax bill--with its weird combination of rules and regulations that place higher burdens on states that value education and innovation.
When it comes to knowledge, the government has turned into thought police, employing Orwellian tactics to remove evidence of established scientific facts from agency websites.
Taxpayers used to be able to avail themselves of data they paid for, but if it doesn't conform with the right-wing economic agenda, such information is deliberately removed.
I realized how low we've sunk when, last fall, I read about a mini-brain drain of 21 climate change experts lured to France by a government that values their expertise.
Donald Trump was, and is, the perfect symbol of know-nothing leadership--bigoted, uninformed, incurious, yet bragging how smart he is.
He's persuaded a bunch of toady conservatives to reject evidence and truth on every level, from reporting on on racial epithets in the White House to backing the president's conspiracy theories.
How can America be great when truth is malleable?
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Trump is in office because of a decade of profound political incompetence on the part of Democrats, in all branches of government. In spite of constant self congratulations on how educated and innovative they are Democrats couldn't even beat Trump, who is the worst person to hold the office of President in the history of our country. Numerous faults and a heaping amount of ignorance and bias on the part of Democrats resulted in defeat, with few signs evident of correcting the problems.
Trump doesn`t persuade, he isn`t smart enough. He is as know nothing as the know nothings that voted for him. It is the Republican leaders who are persuading the know nothing base to rally around the know nothing pig they keep propped up in the White House. These leaders exploit ignorance for the profit of power and money.
Leaving aside the issue of characterisation whether the Trump supporting crowd is the Know Nothing variety of group or the xenophobic begoted anti-immigrant closed minds, the only thing which could certainly be said about them is that they are hell bent on cutting the very branch of the tree (the US) that has offered them shelter and opportunity to grow up.
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You forgot about the Know Nothings at Fox News!
Larry Casper
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You say, 'we need policies to spread the benefits of growth'. Well, we need a democracy, which needs equality. We need equality.
The left, the right, we've all been bad at being committed to equality. A good and decent life for all. And that's housing, food, education, jobs, transportation, health care, retirement, etc. It is a monster of a commitment; and we must do it. We must care for all.
I know that.
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Thank you for this. Inequality is not just economic. It is also social, genetic/deterministic (those who, whether because of nature or nurture or a combination, succeed in academia vs others), etc. Liberals don't get that inequality happens in a meritocracy as much as it happens in a plutocracy. We need guaranteed health care, guaranteed income and a cap on extreme wealth and/or privilege before the U.S. can ever be great (again?).
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@ttrumbo....if it's equality you seek, move to Cuba--where everyone makes the same $23.00 per month. The good news???....free health care! Or better yet, try North Korea.
The poorest, most despotic countries on earth are places where there are no millionaires or billionaires--or world-class corporations. Be careful what you ask for, because if it's equality, you'll be sorely disappointed.
What made the American economy great was technology development WHEN the technologies developed were labor intensive. This need not always be the case. Most technologies built around exploiting IT; the Internet; and robotics are not labor intensive. The labor intensive industries of the future will all be built around the need for renewable energy. Why? Because energy demand is the only human demand that not grow with population, but with the ever increasing complexity of human society, and because the generation and delivery of renewable energy requires the fabrication of physical stuff. The great economies of the future will be those that focus on the technologies for meeting the greatest need of future societies—renewable energy.
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This article badly misunderstands what the Know Nothings were. It then reasons from that false description. In fairness to Krugman, this is a common misuse of the label for current political purposes.
The Know Nothings started as a secret society. When asked, they were supposed to deny everything. That does not mean they actually knew nothing, just that they would not tell others.
"The name "Know Nothing" originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply "I know nothing". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing#Name
Like the KKK, it was essentially racist and hateful, toward much the same groups. The KKK too maintained some secrecy.
There is much that we can learn about ourselves and what we did from this Northern version of the South's KKK.
However, nothing about it involves people knowing nothing or being unaware of their own politics.
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If you reread the column carefully, you'll see that the author has no such misunderstanding. He clearly distinguishes Know-Nothings from know-nothings.
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Don’t bother Mark, facts are becoming as irrelevant to the discussions in The Times as they are on Fox News. Everything has boiled down to playing the blame game, while the only important issue regarding “liberalism” remains how do we finance all these wonderful deeds and what do we do about the stunning inequality created in America in the last forty years. In an article in today’s Times about the ills facing the poor and middle class of Beijing I thought how easily the town, albeit much smaller of San Francisco, could be substituted for Beijing. The challenges of globalization cannot be met without vastly increasing taxes, period, and as recently demonstrated in the liberal blue states of California and New York there is no appetite for that as their lobbyists fight for their tax breaks on million dollar or multi million dollar homes, the hypocrisy is stunning. Dr. Krugman is an economist and could be quite influential yet he wishes to remain mired in the political blame game charade. As Davis meets and they discuss what is to be done about the 80% being left behind by globalization and crony capitalism before the pitchforks come out the learned Dr. prefers to talk about know nothings. Paul should spend less time listening to Canadian rock bands and more time touring America and seeing the result of liberalism and globalization. We need a progressive agenda including a progressive tax increase, in particular corporate, not arcane chatter attempting to justify liberalism.
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That should read As Davos meets. Not Davis.
The "Know Nothing" Republican party evolved over the long term when Conservative Republican leaders, who learned from their keepsake, the military, that people are easily led by hatred and anger. Those emotions are somewhat reflexive instincts born of the instinct of survival. The Republicans have always portrayed themselves as the people's saviors coinciding with the Republican leadership taking advantage of the religious among us already accustomed to blindly following the leader. This may shock you, but the reality of differences between religious institutions and the Republican party is that religious leaders lead their followers in peace and friendship while the Republican political leaders lead their followers utilizing the instincts of battle. The Republican political leaders have cultivated and refined this technique since the Uncivil war in which the North, predominantly and mostly Republican, sent the Military to fight the Southerners. Whole generations of warriors past and present have aligned themselves with Republican leadership that coddles them. The military teaches people to act on orders and to refrain from reflection on life. I'm not sure, but I'd bet that it was Democrats that pushed for the G.I. education bill that sent veterans to colleges and Universities. Even Bush Jr. called the warriors, "Christian Soldiers". The Democrats want peace and knowledge. The Republicans want conflict as we have seen since 2010 when they won control of the House of Reps.
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Thank you. Interesting. But I am not so sure that "religious leaders lead their followers in peace and friendship". Many do. We don't hear them as much. They tend to speak softly as they care and comfort others. But too many do not. They tend to speak loudly as they seek money and power for themselves, and bless others who do the same. If religious leaders who have more conservative congregations and followers led in peace and friendship towards all, I don't think we would be engaged in this discussion. If Christ's teachings and values truly prevailed, we would have a different president and a more equitable, thoughtful, charitable and productive nation for all. Religion could be a positive force, as it was when more churches stood out and up for civil rights with Martin Luther King.
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According to the Bible, Christ himself was a liberal. Were he to show himself today, Republicans would crucify him, figuratively and literally.
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The great genius of Ronald Reagan was that he convinced a good portion of the middle class that it's the poor, rather than the rich, who have taken the middle class's power and resources away from them. Absurd! I fear that the people Professor Krugman is concerned about know considerably less than nothing.
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