Paul Craig Roberts, Georgia Tech ’61, is an American economist, columnist, blogger, and former civil servant. He served during the Reagan administration (1981) as the United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. Brother Roberts has been awarded Who’s Who in the World’s top honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award.
From 1975 to 1978, Roberts served on the congressional staff. As economic counsel to Congressman Jack Kemp, he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill (which became the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981). He served as economic counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch, The Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Bartley offered him an editorial slot. He wrote for the WSJ until 1980. He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.
After his time in government he turned to journalism, holding positions of editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, the Scripps Howard News Service as well as contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.
Roberts was professor of business administration and professor of economics at George Mason University and was the inaugural William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at Georgetown University, serving for 12 years.
From 1993 to 1996, he was a distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute. He also was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
In The New Color Line (1995), Roberts and co-author Lawrence M. Stratton argue that the Civil Rights Act was subverted by the bureaucrats who applied it.
He was awarded the US Treasury’s Meritorious Service Award for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy”.
In 2015, the Mexican Press Club honored Roberts with its International Award For Excellence In Journalism.
During his time in the Reagan administration, Roberts became known as Washington DC’s “most zealous” proponent of supply-side economics, and his concern about U.S. budget deficits led him into conflict with other Reagan-era officials such as Martin Feldstein and David Stockman. He is a critic of the Federal Reserve System and central banking in general. He has also promoted conspiracy theories that the 9/11 attacks and the Charlie Hebdo attack were false flag operations.
He has written or co-written 12 books, contributed chapters to numerous books, and published many articles in scholarly journals. His writings have also appeared in a variety of print and online publications.
- Alienation and the Soviet Economy: Toward a General Theory of Marxian Alienation, Organizational Principles, and the Soviet Economy (University of New Mexico Press, 1971) ISBN 0826302084
- Marx’s Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis (Hoover Institution Press, 1973; 1983) ISBN 0817933611 (Spanish language edition: 1974)
- The Supply Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington (Harvard University Press, 1984) ISBN 0-674-85620-1 (Chinese language edition: 2012)
- Warren Nutter, an Economist for All Time (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984) ISBN 0844713694
- Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy (Cato Institute, 1990) ISBN 0-932790-80-1
- The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-19-511176-1 (Spanish language edition: 1999)
- Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era (Independent Institute, 1999: 2nd edition) ISBN 094599964X
- The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy (Regnery Publishing, 1997) ISBN 0-89526-423-4
- The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice (2000) ISBN 0-7615-2553-X (Broadway Books, 2008: new edition)
- Chile: Dos Visiones La Era Allende-Pinochet (Universidad Andres Bello, 2000). Joint author: Karen LaFollette Araujo. Spanish language.
- How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (AK Press, 2010) ISBN 978-1-84935-007-5
- Wirtschaft Am Abgrund: Der Zusammenbruch der Volkswirtschaften und das Scheitern der Globalisierung (Weltbuch Verlag GmbH, 2012) ISBN 978-3-938706-38-1. German language.
- Chile: Dos Visiones, La era Allende-Pinochet (2000) ISBN 956-284-134-0
- The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West (Clarity Press, 2013) ISBN 0986036250
- How America was Lost. From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State (Clarity Press, 2014) ISBN 9780986036293
- The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington’s Perilous War for Hegemony (Clarity Press, 2015) ISBN 0986076996
- Amerikas Krieg gegen die Welt… und gegen seine eigenen Ideale (Kopp Verlag, 2015) ISBN 386445221X
