A Tea Party Darling’s Offer on Social Security
By KATE ZERNIKE
NYT
The writings of Friedrich Hayek, the 20th century free-market enthusiast and Nobel laureate, have long been a favorite of libertarians, who have used them to argue that government programs like Social Security and Medicare put the nation and its people on what Hayek called “The Road to Serfdom.”
With the advent of the anti-stimulus, anti-big government Tea Party movement, he has enjoyed fresh affection — protesters quote him on their signs at rallies, and Ron Paul reports that people no longer go blank when he mentions Hayek’s name. (For those needing a primer on the differences between Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, who is enjoying fresh antipathy among the ranks of Tea Party supporters, there is a useful rap video.)
But critics like to point out that Tea Party supporters and libertarians are perfectly happy enjoying big government when it works for them. And now it appears that Hayek himself was encouraged to enjoy the benefits of government retirement and health care programs — by one of the country’s most prominent libertarians, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.
According to a series of letters brought to light by The Nation , Mr. Koch wrote to Hayek in 1973 asking him to be a scholar in residence at the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian group founded by Mr. Koch. Hayek declined, saying that he recently had had surgery in Austria, which made him anxious about “the problems (and costs)” of falling ill far from home.
(More here.)
NYT
The writings of Friedrich Hayek, the 20th century free-market enthusiast and Nobel laureate, have long been a favorite of libertarians, who have used them to argue that government programs like Social Security and Medicare put the nation and its people on what Hayek called “The Road to Serfdom.”
With the advent of the anti-stimulus, anti-big government Tea Party movement, he has enjoyed fresh affection — protesters quote him on their signs at rallies, and Ron Paul reports that people no longer go blank when he mentions Hayek’s name. (For those needing a primer on the differences between Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, who is enjoying fresh antipathy among the ranks of Tea Party supporters, there is a useful rap video.)
But critics like to point out that Tea Party supporters and libertarians are perfectly happy enjoying big government when it works for them. And now it appears that Hayek himself was encouraged to enjoy the benefits of government retirement and health care programs — by one of the country’s most prominent libertarians, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.
According to a series of letters brought to light by The Nation , Mr. Koch wrote to Hayek in 1973 asking him to be a scholar in residence at the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian group founded by Mr. Koch. Hayek declined, saying that he recently had had surgery in Austria, which made him anxious about “the problems (and costs)” of falling ill far from home.
(More here.)
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