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Krugman 希望摆脱怨恨驱动的政治

(2024-12-11 07:21:16) 下一个

Krugman 希望摆脱怨恨驱动的政治

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/krugman-hope-for-moving-past-resentment-driven-politics/

保罗·克鲁格曼回顾了他作为《纽约时报》专栏作家 25 年的变化。

保罗·克鲁格曼/《纽约时报》 2024 年 12 月 11 日

这是我在《纽约时报》的最后一篇专栏文章,我从 2000 年 1 月开始在《纽约时报》上发表我的观点。我是在《纽约时报》退休,而不是在世界,所以我仍然会在其他地方表达我的观点。但这似乎是一个很好的机会来反思过去 25 年发生了什么变化。

回想起来,令我印象深刻的是,当时这里和西方世界大部分地区的许多人是多么乐观,而这种乐观已被愤怒和怨恨所取代。我指的不仅仅是那些感到被精英背叛的工人阶级;现在美国最愤怒、最怨恨的人——这些人似乎很可能对即将上任的特朗普政府产生很大影响——是那些觉得自己没有得到足够尊重的亿万富翁。

很难形容 1999 年和 2000 年初大多数美国人的感受有多好。民意调查显示,人们对国家发展方向的满意程度以今天的标准来看似乎超现实。我对 2000 年大选的看法是,许多美国人认为和平与繁荣是理所当然的,所以他们投票给了那个看起来更有趣的人。

在欧洲,事情似乎也进展顺利。特别是,1999 年欧元的引入被广泛誉为朝着更紧密的政治和经济一体化迈出的一步;如果你愿意的话,可以称之为朝着欧洲合众国迈出的一步。我们这些丑陋的美国人中有些人心存疑虑,但最初并没有很多人这样认为。

当然,事情并非一帆风顺。例如,在克林顿执政期间,美国已经出现了相当多的类似 QAnon 的阴谋论,甚至出现了国内恐怖主义事件。亚洲发生了金融危机,我们中的一些人认为这可能是未来事件的预兆;我在 1999 年出版了一本名为《大萧条经济学的回归》的书,认为类似的事情可能会发生在美国;十年后,当他们真的这么做时,我出版了修订版。

尽管如此,当我开始为本文撰稿时,人们对未来还是感觉相当乐观。

为什么这种乐观情绪会消退?在我看来,我们对精英阶层的信任已经崩溃:公众不再相信掌权的人知道自己在做什么,或者我们可以假设他们是诚实的。

情况并非总是如此。 2002 年和 2003 年,我们这些认为入侵伊拉克的理由从根本上说是欺诈的人遭到了许多人反对,他们拒绝相信美国总统会做这样的事情。现在谁还会这么说呢?

2008 年的金融危机以另一种方式破坏了公众对政府知道如何管理经济的信心。欧元作为一种货币经受住了 2012 年达到顶峰的欧洲危机,这场危机导致一些国家的失业率达到大萧条的水平,但对欧盟官员的信任——以及对欧洲光明未来的信念——却没有改变。

失去公众信任的不仅仅是政府。回顾过去,看看金融危机之前银行的受欢迎程度有多高,真是令人惊讶。

就在不久前,科技亿万富翁还受到政治界的广泛钦佩,有些人甚至获得了民间英雄的地位。但现在他们和他们的一些产品面临着幻灭甚至更糟的情况;澳大利亚甚至禁止 16 岁以下儿童使用社交媒体。

这让我想起我之前的观点:目前美国最愤恨的人似乎都是愤怒的亿万富翁。

我们以前就见过这种情况。2008 年金融危机被广泛(正确地)部分归因于金融交易,在金融危机之后,你可能以为昔日的宇宙之主会表现出一点悔意,甚至对获得救助表示感激。但我们看到的却是“奥巴马怒火”,对这位第 44 任总统甚至暗示华尔街可能对这场灾难负有部分责任感到愤怒。

如今,从埃隆·马斯克开始,一些科技亿万富翁的极右翼转向引起了很多讨论。我认为我们不应该想太多,尤其不应该试图说这是政治正确的自由主义者的错。基本上,这归结于富豪们的狭隘,他们过去常常享受公众的认可,但现在他们发现世界上所有的钱都买不到爱。

那么,有没有办法摆脱我们所处的严峻处境?我相信,虽然怨恨可以让坏人掌权,但从长远来看,怨恨并不能让他们继续掌权。在某个时候,公众会意识到,大多数抨击精英的政客实际上在各个方面都是精英,并开始追究他们的责任

因为他们未能兑现承诺,公众可能会因此而感到羞愧。到那时,公众可能愿意听取那些不试图以权威为据、不做出虚假承诺、而是尽力讲真话的人的意见。

我们可能永远无法恢复对领导人的那种信任——相信掌权的人通常会说真话,知道自己在做什么——我们曾经有过这种信任。我们也不应该这样做。但如果我们站起来反对恶人统治——由最坏的人统治——这种现象正在出现,我们最终可能会找到回到更美好世界的道路。

本文最初发表于《纽约时报》,2024 年左右。

“如果我们与现在仍然出现的‘恶人政治’作斗争……
???? https://www.mk.co.kr › 世界

SHIN Yoonjae shishis111@mk.co.kr 2024-12-11

我们即将结束25年的连载。9日揭晓你的告别专栏。“过去的乐观主义变成了愤怒,公众对精英失去信心”令人遗憾“坏人的力量有限”。我不会对一个更美好的世界失去乐观。

保罗·克鲁格曼教授9日的最后一篇专栏,宣布他将结束他在纽约时报的专栏系列。[捕捉纽约时报首页]

“如果我们与现在仍然出现的‘恶人政治’作斗争,我们最终将能够回到一个更美好的世界。”

保罗·克鲁格曼(71岁), 2008年诺贝尔经济学奖得主、纽约市立大学教授克鲁格曼10日从《纽约时报》专栏作家的岗位上退休。克鲁格曼教授自2000年起,在《纽约时报》上发表专栏长达25年,内容涉及经济、政治、文化等全方位领域。

他在告别专栏《在抵抗时代寻找希望》的开篇写道:“这似乎是一个很好的机会,让我们回顾一下过去25年里(世界,包括美国)发生了哪些变化。”

他说:“25年前开始写这个专栏的时候,美国人把和平与繁荣视为理所当然,欧洲也实现了政治和经济一体化。”然而,令我惊讶的是,我们和西方世界的许多人是多么乐观,而这种乐观在多大程度上被愤怒和愤怒所取代。“现在乐观正在变成愤怒。”

“(愤怒的)不仅是感到被精英背叛的工人阶级,还有很可能对下一届唐纳德·特朗普政府产生重大影响的亿万富翁,”他写道。“乐观情绪之所以受到打击,是因为公众不再相信执掌国家行政的人,他们认为这些人不诚实,公众对(美国社会的)‘精英’的信任已经崩溃,”他说。

然而,他也没有失去立场。他预测说:“我们是否能摆脱目前所处的严峻局面值得怀疑,但如果我们与目前仍在出现的‘恶人统治’(一种由最底层统治的制度)作斗争,我们最终将能够回到一个更好的世界。”

保罗·克鲁格曼教授。[韩联社]

保罗·克鲁格曼教授。 [韩联社]

与此同时,克鲁格曼教授曾预测到当时的亚洲金融危机,包括1997年韩国的外汇危机。他在1994年的一篇文章中写道:“包括韩国在内的亚洲新兴国家的发展,并不是因为生产率高,而是因为投入了过多的资本和人力等生产要素,危机很快就会到来。”2005年,他提到,弥补美国当前赤字的大量外国资金正在形成美国房地产价格泡沫,2006年至2010年之间可能会发生重大金融危机。他因在建立解答自由贸易和全球化问题的经济理论方面做出的贡献,获得了2008年的诺贝尔经济学奖。

克鲁格曼教授1953年出生于纽约州的一个犹太家庭,在耶鲁大学获得经济学硕士学位,随后在麻省理工学院(MIT)获得经济学博士学位。他在罗纳德·里根政府时期从1982年开始担任白宫经济顾问委员会委员,任期一年。

此后,他先后在耶鲁大学、麻省理工学院和斯坦福大学担任教授,2000年起调至普林斯顿大学经济学系,并立即担任纽约时报专栏作家。

宣布退休的纽约时报评论说:“看到他对新闻事业的浓厚兴趣和强烈的职业道德,我深受鼓舞。”克鲁格曼教授告诉纽约时报,这是最后一篇专栏文章,但他会继续在其他地方发表意见。

亲民主党的克鲁格曼教授在总统大选期间也强烈批评共和党候选人唐纳德·特朗普。他当天没有点名批评某位候选人,但写道:“我认为愤怒可以让‘坏人’掌权,但不能让他们一直掌权。”因此,一些人认为,愤怒会让“坏人”掌权,但“坏人”不会一直掌权。被称为党派学者。

Krugman: Hope for moving past resentment-driven politics

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/krugman-hope-for-moving-past-resentment-driven-politics/

Paul Krugman reflects on what’s changed in his 25 years as a New York Times columnist.

By Paul Krugman / The New York Times  December 11, 2024

This is my final column for The New York Times, where I began publishing my opinions in January 2000. I’m retiring from the Times, not the world, so I’ll still be expressing my views in other places. But this does seem like a good occasion to reflect on what has changed over these past 25 years.

What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which 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, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.

It’s hard to convey just how good most Americans were feeling in 1999 and early 2000. Polls showed a level of satisfaction with the direction of the country that looks surreal by today’s standards. My sense of what happened in the 2000 election was that many Americans took peace and prosperity for granted, so they voted for the guy who seemed as if he’d be more fun to hang out with.

In Europe, too, things seemed to be going well. In particular, the introduction of the euro in 1999 was widely hailed as a step toward closer political as well as economic integration; toward a United States of Europe, if you like. Some of us ugly Americans had misgivings, but initially they weren’t widely shared.

Of course, it wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. There was, for example, already a fair bit of proto-QAnon-type conspiracy theorizing and even instances of domestic terrorism in America during the Clinton years. There were financial crises in Asia, which some of us saw as a potential harbinger of things to come; I published a 1999 book titled “The Return of Depression Economics,” arguing that similar things could happen here; I put out a revised edition a decade later, when they did.

Still, people were feeling pretty good about the future when I began writing for this paper.

Why did this optimism curdle? As I see it, we’ve had a collapse of trust in elites: The public no longer has faith that the people running things know what they’re doing, or that we can assume that they’re being honest.

It was not always thus. In 2002 and 2003, those of us who argued that the case for invading Iraq was fundamentally fraudulent received a lot of pushback from people refusing to believe that an American president would do such a thing. Who would say that now?

In a different way, the financial crisis of 2008 undermined any faith the public had that governments knew how to manage economies. The euro as a currency survived the European crisis that peaked in 2012, which sent unemployment in some countries to Great Depression levels, but trust in Eurocrats — and belief in a bright European future — didn’t.

It’s not just governments that have lost the public’s trust. It’s astonishing to look back and see how much more favorably banks were viewed before the financial crisis.

And it wasn’t that long ago that technology billionaires were widely admired across the political spectrum, some achieving folk-hero status. But now they and some of their products face disillusionment and worse; Australia has even banned social media use by children younger than 16.

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

We’ve seen this before. After the 2008 financial crisis, which was widely (and correctly) attributed in part to financial wheeling and dealing, you might have expected the erstwhile Masters of the Universe to show a bit of contrition, maybe even gratitude at having been bailed out. What we got instead was “Obama rage,” fury at the 44th president for even suggesting that Wall Street might have been partly to blame for the disaster.

These days, there has been a lot of discussion of the hard right turn of some tech billionaires, from Elon Musk on down. I’d argue that we shouldn’t overthink it, and we especially shouldn’t try to say that this is somehow the fault of politically correct liberals. Basically, it comes down to the pettiness of plutocrats who used to bask in public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can’t buy you love.

So, is there a way out of the grim place we’re in? What I believe is that although resentment can put bad people in power, in the long run it can’t keep them there. At some point, the public will realize that most politicians railing against elites actually are elites in every sense that matters and start to hold them accountable for their failure to deliver on their promises. And at that point, the public may be willing to listen to people who don’t try to argue from authority, don’t make false promises, but do try to tell the truth as best they can.

We may never recover the kind of faith in our leaders — belief that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they’re doing — that we used to have. Nor should we. But if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2024.

We're wrapping up 25 years of serialization. Reveal your farewell column on the 9th. "Past optimism turns into anger Public Lose Faith in Elite" deplorable "Bad people have their limits to power". I don't lose my optimism about a better world.
 
Professor Paul Krugman's last column on the 9th, announcing that he will end the series of his New York Times column. [Capturing NYT homepage]

"If we fight against the 'kakistocracy' that is still appearing at this moment, we will eventually be able to return to a better world."

Paul Krugman (71), a professor at the City University of New York who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, retired from his position as a columnist for the New York Times (NYT) on the 10th. Since 2000, Professor Krugman has published a column in the NYT on all-round areas such as economy, politics, and culture for 25 years.

"It seems to be a good opportunity to look back on what has changed (in the world, including the United States) over the past 25 years," he wrote at the beginning of a farewell column titled "Finding Hope in an Age of Resistance."

"At the time of 25 years ago when the column began, Americans took peace and prosperity for granted, and political and economic integration also took place in Europe," he said. However, it surprises me how optimistic we and many in the Western world were and how much that optimism was replaced by anger and anger, he said. "Now optimism is turning into anger."

"(Those who get angry) are not only working classes who feel betrayed by the elite, but also billionaires who are very likely to exert great influence on the next Donald Trump administration," he wrote. "The reason why optimism has been dampened is that the public no longer has faith in the people who run the state administration, they don't think they're honest, and the public's trust in the "elites" (of American society) has collapsed," he said.

However, he also did not lose his stances. "It is questionable whether there is any way out of the grim situation we are in, but if we fight against the Kakistocracy (a system ruled by the lowest), which is still appearing at this moment, we will eventually be able to return to a better world," he predicted.

Professor Paul Krugman. [Yonhap News]

Professor Paul Krugman. [Yonhap News]

Meanwhile, Professor Krugman predicted the Asian financial crisis at the time, including Korea's 1997 foreign exchange crisis. "The development of emerging Asian countries, including South Korea, is not due to high productivity, but because it is the result of too much input of production factors such as capital and manpower, a crisis will come soon," he wrote in a 1994 article. In 2005, he mentioned that a large portion of foreign funds that made up for the current deficit in the United States were forming a U.S. real estate price bubble, and that a major financial crisis could occur between 2006 and 2010. He received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to the establishment of economic theories that provide answers to questions about free trade and globalization.

Born to a Jewish family in New York State in 1953, Professor Krugman received a master's degree in economics from Yale University and then received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served on the White House Economic Advisory Committee during the Ronald Reagan administration for a year from 1982.

Since then, he has been a professor at Yale University, MIT, and Stanford University, and since 2000, he has moved to Princeton University's Department of Economics, and immediately worked as a NYT columnist.

Announcing his retirement, the New York Times said, "It was a great inspiration to see his deep interest in journalism and his strong work ethic." Professor Krugman told the NYT that this is the last column, but he will continue to give his opinion elsewhere.

Professor Krugman, a pro-(親) Democrat, has also strongly criticized Republican candidate Donald Trump during the presidential election. He did not name a specific person on the day, but wrote, "I believe anger can allow 'bad people' to take power, but it cannot keep them in that position." For this reason, some are regarded as partisan scholars.

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