‘Warped by runaway egos’: Paul Krugman scorches billionaires like Bloomberg who think America needs them to ‘save the day’ – By Alex Henderson (AlterNet) / Nov 12 2019
Michael Bloomberg is seriously considering running for president as a Democrat; Tuesday, the billionaire former New York City mayor officially filed paperwork for the March 3 Democratic primary in Arkansas. Bloomberg believes that Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders are too left-of-center for 2020’s general election and that former Vice President Joe Biden, a centrist, is running a weak campaign. Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman isn’t the least bit enthusiastic about a Bloomberg presidential run, and he stresses in his November 11 column that the last thing the U.S. needs is a billionaire coming in to “save the day.”
“Billionaires aren’t necessarily bad people, and most of them probably aren’t,” Krugman writes. “However, some are, and my unscientific sense is that billionaires are more likely than the rest of us to exhibit bad judgment warped by runaway egos — especially in the political sphere.”
Bloomberg, Krugman notes, isn’t the first billionaire who has been touted as a political savior for 2020: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also considered a presidential run.
“When Howard Schultz — remember him? — ran that combination up the flagpole to see if anyone saluted, only about 4% of voters approved,” Krugman observes. “And early indications don’t show Bloomberg doing much better, even though as someone who successfully ran New York, he has a much better case to offer.”
Billionaires, Krugman stresses, don’t necessarily make wise decisions — and millions of American voters find the “bubble” they inhabit to be problematic.
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