Paul Craig Roberts American economist and commentator Date of Birth: 03.04.1939 Country: USA

1. Biography of Paul Craig Roberts
2. Early Life and Education
3. Contributions to Economics
4. Government and Policy Work
5. Later Career

Biography of Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and commentator. He is best known for his role as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under the Reagan administration, where he gained recognition as one of the architects of Reaganomics. Roberts has also served as an editor and columnist for various publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.

Throughout his career, Roberts has been a vocal critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. He has spoken out against the Iraq War, the significant financial support provided to Israel, constitutional violations by the Republican Party, neoconservatives and their involvement in the South Ossetia conflict, the outsourcing of production to China, and the role of American media and democracy.

Roberts is an accomplished author, having written or co-authored eight books and numerous articles in academic journals. He has appeared before congressional committees on economic policy around 30 times and his articles are frequently published on various platforms, including OpEdNews, Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, VDARE.com, LewRockwell.com, and in newspapers such as CounterPunch and American Free Press. He has also been a frequent guest on the radio show "The Political Cesspool."

Early Life and Education

Paul Craig Roberts was born on April 3, 1939, in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied at the Georgia Institute of Technology and obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Virginia. He also completed programs at the University of California, Berkeley, and Merton College, Oxford University. His first scholarly article, "Classica et Mediaevalia," was based on the well-known "Pirenne thesis" developed by Belgian historian Henri Pirenne.

Contributions to Economics

Roberts' books have always carried a sense of sensation. In his 1971 book, "Alienation and the Soviet Economy," he described the problems of the Soviet economy as a result of the struggle between excessive aspirations and unyielding reality. He argued that the Soviet economy was not centrally planned, but its institutions, such as material-technical supply, reflected the original Marxist desire to create a non-market mode of production.

In "Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis" (1973), Roberts claimed that Marx was an organizational theorist, and his materialistic conception of history excluded goodwill as an effective force for change.

Government and Policy Work

From 1975 to 1978, Roberts worked in Congress as an economic advisor to Congressman Jack Kemp. He played a crucial role in the development of the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut bill, which later became the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Roberts' 1978 article for Harper's Magazine, written as an economic advisor to Senator Orrin Hatch, caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal's editor, Robert L. Bartley, who offered him a column until 1980.

Roberts also held the position of Senior Research Fellow in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which was then part of Georgetown University. From early 1981 until January 1982, Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. His contributions to the development of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 earned him the Meritorious Service Award from the Department of the Treasury for his outstanding contributions to U.S. economic policy.

From 1993 to 1996, Roberts served as a Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Later Career

On March 26, 2010, Roberts announced his retirement in his own column but soon resumed writing and publishing. Despite his retirement, he continues to contribute his insights and opinions on various economic and political issues.