Paul Krugman Blog- High Fallutin’ Nazis [View all]

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Here comes another billionaire who thinks that anyone who talks about income inequality is a Nazi; this time it’s Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot. I don’t have anything useful to say about this, other than the observation that there must be a lot of these guys. I mean, there aren’t that many billionaires, so that coming up with multiple examples of the genus who not only believe that progressives are just like Hitler but are willing to say so in public must indicate that a substantial proportion of our billionaires share this belief, but more privately. Luckily, great wealth doesn’t bring great political influence in modern America — does it?

But Jonathan Cohn’s report on Langone brought to mind an earlier rant by the same guy, in which he denounced yours truly and my “high-fallutin’ thoughts and ideas.” And I think, now that I remember that, that this rant (and others like it) gives a partial clue to the mystery of the continuing popularity of the Wall Street macro canon, despite its total failure in practice.

For what, after all, was Langone raging against? Well, me, of course. But not, presumably, against “high-fallutin” ideas in general: Langone can’t really be a stupid man, and I’m sure that when it comes to, say, information systems for inventory management hes’ quite willing to accept the idea that some things are technical and require some knowledge.

No, what I think he’s really raging against are two things. First is the idea that understanding economics, as opposed to other issues, might involve some kind of special expertise. This is an all too common problem with the wealthy, and maybe especially among self-made men: they think that their personal financial success means that they understand the economic system, and bristle at the notion that macroeconomics may be more than the sum of individual business strategies.


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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/high-fallutin-nazis/?smid=re-share