Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman warns that the billionaires who groveled to flatter President Donald Trump after the 2024 election are now spending a fortune to stop a Democratic wave and the corruption probe that will come with it.
In a Substack post on the eve of the midterms, Krugman argued that Trump is not the only one on the ballot, but the American oligarchs have huge stakes in the outcome.
Krugman noted that Trump urging GOP voters to pretend he is on the ballot is exactly what his Democrat opponents hope they would do, given his historic unpopularity. He added that polls show Republicans almost certain to lose the House and likely to lose the Senate.
The Nobel Prize winner laid out two reasons why America’s oligarchs need to be worried ahead of a pending blue wave. He says that the Democratic Party is not ideologically uniform and is a center-left party as a whole, and would therefore be far “less friendly to plutocrats than the GOP.”
He continued: “And because they rushed to prostrate themselves at Trump’s feet after the 2024 election, many of the oligarchs may find themselves personally in the crosshairs if a Democratic Congress begins serious hearings on Trumpian corruption.”
Krugman said that fear explains the flood of money now pouring into the race. To put their enormous wealth into perspective, he cited a New York Times analysis finding that just 20 donors, about one ten-millionth of the adult population, have put roughly $2 billion into this election, which comes to about 15 percent of all campaign spending.
He noted that the wealthy donors are overwhelmingly backing the GOP. The Times tracks crypto and gambling donors separately, but he wrote that it is a good bet most of their money is also going to right-wing candidates.
Krugman said that their ability to pour so much money into campaigns is partly due to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending.
But the bigger factor, he argued, is the staggering concentration of wealth at the very top. Citing estimates from Realtime Inequality, he said this tiny group holds more than ten times the share of national wealth it did a few decades ago.
Krugman closed by invoking Woodrow Wilson, who wrote in 1913: “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”
Krugman acknowledged there is plenty to criticize about Wilson, but said he was right on this point, and that America once again has men big enough to own its government.
“This midterm is a test of whether they will get away with it,” Krugman wrote. His final word to readers was simple: vote.
