http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/high-fallutin-nazis/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
"For what, after all, was Langone [co-founder of Home Depot] raging against? Well, me, of course. But not, presumably, against “high-fallutin” ideas in general: Langone can’t really be a stupid man, and I’m sure that when it comes to, say, information systems for inventory management hes’ quite willing to accept the idea that some things are technical and require some knowledge.
No, what I think he’s really raging against are two things. First is the idea that understanding economics, as opposed to other issues, might involve some kind of special expertise. This is an all too common problem with the wealthy, and maybe especially among self-made men: they think that their personal financial success means that they understand the economic system, and bristle at the notion that macroeconomics may be more than the sum of individual business strategies.
The other source of his rage — and this, I think, gets to the right-wing canon — is fury at the notion that sometimes scarcity doesn’t rule. For many people on the right, it has to be true — just has to be true — that prosperity is limited by the willingness of productive people (that is, people like them) to produce. The idea that sometimes the problem is instead lack of demand, that the failure is a system malfunction rather than a lack of sufficient effort, is anathema. Among other things, it suggests that sometimes people succeed or fail for reasons that have nothing to do with their personal talents and virtues or lack thereof, a suggestion that they — who believe that their personal success was entirely earned — find deeply offensive."
Amen
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