Paul Krugman retires as Times columnist (Finally). 1/2
Dec. 6, 2024
After nearly 25 years as an Opinion columnist, Paul is signing off. Read more in this note from Kathleen Kingsbury.
I want to take you back to Jan. 2, 2000, a day when Y2K was in the rearview mirror and the dot-com bubble burst was just around the corner, when the Dow stood at a mighty 11,500 and a New York Times Opinion columnist debuted on the scene with the first of many prescient arguments and ideas about economics and government.
“Beginnings are always difficult: Even the most tough-minded writer finds it hard to avoid portentousness,” Paul Krugman wrote in his inaugural column nearly 25 years ago. “And since this is a quadruple beginning (new year, new century, new millennium and, for me, new column), I won’t even try. What follows are some broad opening-night thoughts about the world economy.”
That lede and the column were signature Krugman: The authoritative voice. The lively writing. The direct style. The clear hand guiding readers through a thicket of policy, data and trade-offs. The big ideas — in that column, they were about the First Global Economy and the Second Global Economy and how the interplay of political and economic questions would shape life worldwide in the 21st century. In little time, Paul became an essential read in Opinion, helping countless readers become more fluent in and mindful of how trade, taxes, technology, the markets, labor and capital intersected with political leadership, ideology and partisanship to shape the lives of people across America and the world.
Beginnings are always difficult, as Paul said, and so are endings. I’m writing to let you know that he has decided to retire from The Times at the end of the year. He plans to write a final column soon — though he will forever be a friend of Opinion.
Paul is an important figure in the recent history of Times Opinion. Time and again, he took on the big fights, grappled with policy deeply and seriously, held the powerful to account and spoke hard truths — sometimes as a lonely voice arguing unfashionable positions. He was a strong, clear, early opponent of the American invasion of Iraq and spent years shining a light on the lies and consequences involved with that war.
He was a principled critic of George W. Bush’s leadership and many of his policy priorities and, with lucid prose, helped readers understand the implications of the Bush tax cuts and his proposed privatization of Social Security. And Paul was plenty tough on Bush’s successor, too: Barack Obama hadn’t even taken office in 2009 when Paul memorably took apart the president-elect’s prescription for the Great Recession: “The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat,” Paul wrote. “In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed.”
And through the Trump era and the Biden presidency, Paul was ever-sharp about the critical stakes facing the country, not least the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump and how his plans could radically harm the economy. A few weeks before this year’s election, Paul took a deep dive into Trump’s tariff plans, laying out for readers in clear and urgent writing why his economic policy ideas could do enormous damage to American society. He ended the essay with a classic Krugman kicker, where he summarized the cons of Trump’s tariffs in one graf and then wrote in the final graf, “Pros: I can’t think of any.”
Nick Fox, one of Paul’s editors over the years, said: “Twenty-five years ago, who could have imagined that a column by an expert in economics (yawn!) would become addictive for millions of Americans? Paul made the complex clear, cut through double talk and obfuscation and wrote in the voice of a tough but beloved teacher.
It was remarkable that he could write so enjoyably and insightfully as many as four times a week.”
https://www.nytco.com/press/paul-krugman-retires-as-times-columnist/