IS GEORGE SOROS BECOMING A LIBERTARIAN

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Review of Books Foundation, and the Fritt Ord Foundation of Oslo hosted a panel discussion by Paul Krugman, George Soros, Edmund Phelps and Jeffrey Sachs titled: The Global Economy: Crisis Without End—From Europe to Beijing to Washington, Can the World’s Economic System Cope? Although the panel had been stacked with predictably progressive cheerleaders for the social welfare state, George Soros shocked the crowd when he rejected the central hypothesis of the left that “targeted” government spending can create full employment and equitable distribution of incomes. According to Soros: we should all acknowledge that, as nice as it would be to think we can model the economy and feel control over the situation, this is a pipe dream and we should get used to not really knowing what will happen when we do one thing versus another.”
Undeterred by Soros’ throwing his progressive colleagues under the conservative’s bus, the other panelist went all-in for exercising greater government control of the U.S. economy. Paul Krugman retorted that Keynesian deficit spending is a standard tool that has been used as prescriptive medicine for every economic crisis since the 1920s. Krugman also emphasized that the only reason massive stimulus spending has failed during the current crisis is that the size of the stimulus spending was not massive enough. He advocated for Congress to immediately pass an even more massive stimulus package to make up for their lack of courage. Jeffery Sachs chimed in that government should implement a long-term strategy to invest a larger percentage of tax dollars into infrastructure, basic education and research. Edmund Phelps argued that the “new classical” theories begun by Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayek and the “Chicago School” economists since in the 1970s, must be abandoned since the theory has been “falsified by the recent asset price collapse.” Phelps stated that it is the duty of government to regulate advanced economies in order “to build a business sector of high dynamism and broad inclusion.” Krugman, Sachs and Phelps all agreed that the most pressing need was for Congress to start spending 2% of GDP to jumpstart the world’s economy.
When asked by Cathy O’Neil how we can make today’s complex economic system simple enough to actually regulate it, Krugman answered that Dodd-Frank had solved everything. O’Neil later commented after the program: “What I felt then and what I still feel is that these super influential economists are so high on their clean, simple economic models of the world (about the only variables of which are GDP, stimulus, and tax rates) that they focus on the model to the exclusion of the secondary issues.” She went on to comment: “My conclusion from that is that Krugman must really have only an outline in his head of how this stuff works- the devil, as we know, is really in the detail.”
It is doubtful that George Soros has completely abandoned his progressive credentials and become a card carrying libertarian. He still gives billions to left-wing causes such as the Open Society Institute, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty Law Center, Soujourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women, Media Matters, MoveOn.org, and the Center for American Progress. But perhaps the reason that Soros is no longer in agreement on the merits of using targeted government spending to create a better economy is that he has actually traded and made money inside the capitalist system. Krugman and Phelps have Nobel Prizes and Jeffery Sachs runs the prestigious Earth Institute at Columbia University, but none of them have ever run a business and made a payroll like Soros.
Let’s all be a little nicer to George and encourage him to take some more baby steps towards embracing Libertarianism’s love of freedom, individual liberty, voluntary association and limiting government power.
Feel free to forward this Op Ed and or follow our Blog at www.chrissstreetandcompany.com
Thank you also for the success of Chriss Street’s latest book: “The Third Way”
Available in hard copy or for Kindle at: www.amazon.com