C’mon, New York Times columnist and Princeton University economist Paul Krugman isn’t some flaming radical; he’s one of the intelligentsia. But that’s part of the  fear-mongering that’s rampant: Mistrust those smart guys. What do they know? They’re not like us. Are the super-rich like the rest of us?

The super-rich are playing the remaining 99 percent of us, clutching their greed close to their chests, and horribly misleading working people. What’s really pathetic is that it often works, aligning those who have jobs with millionaires. DON’T TAKE WHAT WE HAVE is the message. It’s something many ultra-rich and working people oddly agree on.

Why do so many Americans fear the smartest among us not the richest, although they’re the ones who are screwing the rest of us? The average American CEO makes 475 times more than the average worker. So much for the false Reaganite trickle-down economics. I earn the same as an average high school graduate, even though I have a master’s degree and lots of professional experience, but I’ve made my choices. (When 9.6 percent of recent college graduates can’t get any job, they have no choices to make).

Here’s what I’d love to see: the federal government awarding grants to people over 55 with a creative project based on their life experiences, which will better the lives of their fellow citizens.

Far-fetched? It’s got to be a better idea than sinking trillions of dollars a day into endless — and fruitless — wars.

Who else has any vision? John Boehner? “I laugh just thinking about the question,” writes Tom Friedman in yesterday’s NYT. “What is President Obama’s vision? I cry when I think about the question,” he continues.

“We cannot bail or tax-cut our way to prosperity. We can only, as [Steve] Jobs understood, invent our way to prosperity,” writes Friedman.

So why is innovation, education and entrepreneurship that benefits all of us, or as the 14th Amendment states, equal protection under the law, so scary?