Economist Paul Krugman: Here’s the main thing Trump and Vance have 'in common'

Economist Paul Krugman just made clear that Americans should not trust 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH).

In an op-ed published by the New York Times Thursday, Krugman emphasizes that while "Trump and Vance have a lot" of similarities, one thing they have "in common" is that "they’re both con men who despise their most avid supporters."

According to Krugman, the Ohio senator "talks a lot about his hardscrabble roots. But people should read what he wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy,” which shows startling contempt for the people he grew up with but who, unlike him, didn’t escape small-town poverty."

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The longtime economist adds that Americans "should also be aware that while his convention speech on Wednesday denounced 'Wall Street barons,' his rise has to a large extent been orchestrated by a group of tech billionaires; he’s a protégé of Peter Thiel."

Krugman points to the "sharp rise in the fraction of men in their prime working years without jobs, notably in the eastern part of the American heartland," highlighting the fact that "social problems have proliferated," and "as the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented, there has been a surge in 'deaths of despair,' which they defined as deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide."

Certain "changes in the economy that undermined many small towns’ reason for being, a process that began during the Reagan years and isn’t unique to our country," yielded " social dysfunction — echoing the earlier rise in social dysfunction in America’s cities when blue-collar urban jobs disappeared," Krugman writes.

The economist emphasizes:

We should be making a national effort to ameliorate the problems of left-behind regions. Actually, the Biden administration has been doing just that, with much of its industrial policy aimed at helping depressed areas. Among other things, a Biden administration grant of up to $575 million — partly financed by legislation Republicans unanimously opposed — will help upgrade a steel plant in Vance’s hometown, Middletown, Ohio.

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"There’s no reason to believe anything Vance says about supporting the working class," Krugman writes. "His book makes it clear that, at least to a degree, he looks down on those who haven’t managed some measure of his professional trajectory."

Krugman's full op-ed is available at this link.