Saturday, April 20, 2019

BE CAREFUL: The New Way Socialists Are Going to Hide Who They Are

Joseph Stiglitz
By Robert Wenzel

A new Joseph Stiglitz book will be out next week, People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.

Stiglitz, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and a former chief economist of the World Bank, told Andrew Ross Sorkin for The New York Times:

Mr. Stiglitz said he had chosen “progressive capitalism” for his book’s title because he worried about triggering a visceral reaction to the word “socialism.”
“I’m trying to avoid some of the emotions that are still attached,” he said. “I try in my title to use progressive capitalism to try to say I believe in a market economy, but I also believe in government regulation.”
What he is really advocating is what I call early-stage socialism. Don't for a minute think the final stage is not full socialism (SEE: "I was on the executive committee of the Socialist Party").

Sorkin reports that in the book Sorkin "maps out a plan that he calls a 'social contract' to improve jobs, health, education, housing and retirement."

But F. A. Hayek made clear there can be no such social contract. He is just attempting to gain the low-hanging socialist fruit for central power.

The Democratic Socialists of America make no secret as to their final goal:
Although capitalism will be with us for a long time, reforms we win now—raising the minimum wage, securing a national health plan, and demanding passage of right-to-strike legislation—can bring us closer to socialism.
Sorkin reports:
 Mr. Stiglitz proposes using a combination of market forces and government nudges — a higher minimum wage and an expanded earned-income tax credit, for example — to help the poorest among us. He also supports a “public option” to improve competition in the private sector in areas like health care and even retirement savings.
So Stiglitz is either in on the slippery scam or a useful idiot that the hard-core socialists will use.

But this is a new socialist front has opened up, the progressive capitalists, with the same early stage socialist demands. Stiglitz is a leader in that front. It will catch on. Progressive capitalists or something like it.

Sorkin also reports for example:
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who formally announced his candidacy for president this week, calls himself a proponent of “democratic capitalism.”
But don't pay attention to what they call themselves, pay attention to what their policies will introduce--and it is always early stage socialism.


Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here

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