This is my last column for The New York Times, where I began publishing in January 2000. I am retiring from the Times, not the world, so I will continue to express my views elsewhere. But it seems like a good opportunity to reflect on what has changed in these 25 years. Looking back, what surprises me is how optimistic many people were then, both in the United States and in much of the Western world, and to what extent that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I'm not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; Some of the angriest and most resentful people in America right now—people who look like they will have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration—are billionaires who don't feel admired enough. It's hard to convey how good Americans felt in 1999. and early 2000. Polls showed a level of satisfaction with the country's direction that seems surreal by today's standards. My impression of what happened in the 2000 election was that many Americans took peace and prosperity for granted, so they voted for the guy they thought was the most fun to hang out with. In Europe, too, things seemed to be going smoothly. good. In particular, the introduction of the euro in 1999 was widely hailed as a step towards greater political and economic integration, towards a United States of Europe, if you will. Some of us ugly Americans had our doubts, but they weren't widespread at first. Of course, it wasn't all stuffed animals and rainbows. For example, during the Bill Clinton years, there were already a good number of proto-QAnon-type conspiracy theories in the United States and even cases of national terrorism. There were financial crises in Asia, which some of us saw as a possible harbinger of what was to come; In 1999 I published a book called The Return of the Depression Economy and the Current Crisis, in which I argued that similar things could happen in the United States; When they happened, a decade later, I published a revised edition. Still, people were feeling pretty optimistic about the future when I started writing for this newspaper. Why has that optimism soured? As I see it, our trust in elites has plummeted: the public no longer has faith that the people in charge know what they are doing, or that we can assume they are being honest. It hasn't always been like this. In 2002 and 2003, those of us who argued that the invasion of Iraq was basically fraudulent received a lot of criticism from people who refused to believe that an American president would be capable of doing something like that. Who would say that now? In a different way, the 2008 financial crisis undermined citizens' confidence in governments knowing how to manage the economy. The euro as a currency survived the European crisis that peaked in 2012, bringing unemployment in some countries to Great Depression levels, but not confidence in Eurocrats and faith in a bright European future. Not only Governments have lost the trust of citizens. It's amazing to look back and see that before the financial crisis, banks were viewed much more favorably. And it wasn't that long ago that tech billionaires were admired across the political spectrum, some even achieving folk hero status. But now they and some of their products are facing disappointment and worse; Australia has even banned those under 16 from using social media. Which brings me back to the point that some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires. We've seen it before. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which was widely (and rightly) blamed in part on financial goings-on, the former masters of the universe might have been expected to show some regret, perhaps even gratitude for being rescued. What we got instead was obamaphobia, the aversion toward the 44th president for even hinting that Wall Street might have been partly to blame for the disaster. Much has been made these days about the shift to the right by some tech billionaires, from Elon Musk on down. I would say that we should not think too much about it and, above all, we should not try to somehow blame the politically correct liberals. Basically, it boils down to the pettiness of plutocrats who used to enjoy public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can't buy love. So is there a way out of this bleak situation we're in? do we find? What I believe is that, although resentment can bring bad people to power, it cannot keep them there in the long run. At some point, the public will realize that most politicians who rail against elites are actually elites in every way that matters, and will start holding them accountable for not keeping their promises. And at that point, citizens may be willing to listen to people who do not try to use their authority as an argument, who do not make false promises, but who try to stick as best they can to the truth. We may never get class back. of faith we used to have in our leaders, the conviction that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they are doing. And neither should we. But if we stand up to the caquistocracy—rule by the worst—that is emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. © The New York Times, 2024. News Clips Translation