BURSTNobel laureate Paul Krugman, a longtime New York Times columnist, wrote about a change he's seen in Americans over the last two decades as he published his final column in the newspaper.
"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many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment," Krugman wrote wrote Wednesday.
He noted that, in the early 2000s, "people were feeling pretty good about the future when I began writing for this paper."
"Why did this optimism curdle? 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," Krugman added.
The Times announced Krugman's retirement last week, calling him "an important figure in the recent history of Times Opinion."
Krugman said he is retiring from the Times but not "the world."
"So I’ll still be expressing my views in other places," he said.
"We may never recover the kind of faith in our leaders — belief that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they’re doing — that we used to have," Krugman wrote in his final post. "Nor should we."
"But if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world," he added.