‘Grim place’: Famed NY Times columnist unleashes blame in bleak farewell column

Famed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman gave a bleak goodbye in his final piece for the paper Tuesday — but left with a glimmer of hope for the future.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist looked back on the 25 years since he penned his first opinion piece — and despaired at what the world has become.

“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many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment,” he wrote as he retired from the Times.

“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.”

In 1999, he wrote, there was a feeling of satisfaction and excitement for the future. But, he said, “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.”

“Why did this optimism curdle?” he asked.

“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.”

He remembered the reluctance to believe in 2002 that an American president would pursue fraudulent reasons to invade Iraq. “ Who would say that now?” he asked.

“In a different way, the financial crisis of 2008 undermined any faith the public had that governments knew how to manage economies.”

But he saved much of his ire — and blame for the state of the world — for the super-rich.

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“Some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires,” he said.

“ … 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 while 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.”