THOSE WHO FOLLOWED THE PROCEEDINGS of the annual Wall Street Journal CEO Council held in Washington last November may have been hoping for some succinct suggestions on how to fix our nation’s battered economy. After all, there were 133 top corporate executives and 14 distinguished invited guests, including President Obama, present at this conference.

“But what they heard,” wrote the Journal’s executive business editor John Bussey, “was more stalemate — on the budget, the debt ceiling, taxes and health insurance, among other things. Democrats and Republicans at the conference once again decried a ‘failure of leadership’ — by the other guy.”

Maybe some additional guests should have been invited. Certainly hedge fund guru Stanley Druckenmiller would have added some lively conversation. Cited in the Journal as “one of the most successful money managers of all time,” Druckenmiller “has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don’t hear out of Washington.” He’s explaining how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are “ripping off” the X, Y and Z generation voters who re-elected Obama in 2012.

Specifically, Druckenmiller tells them, “while today’s 65-year-olds will receive on average net lifetime benefits of $327,400, children born now will suffer net lifetime losses of $420,600 as they struggle to pay the bills of aging Americans.” With regard to the debt ceiling Obama is determined to ignore, Druckenmiller says, “… by the 2040s the debt itself and its gargantuan interest payments become bigger problems than entitlements.”

Some might say Druckenmiller’s solution sounds like something from the Occupy Wall Street playbook. He wants to “raise tax rates on investors while at the same time cutting the corporate tax rate to zero.” As far as rich people who invest in corporate stocks and bonds are concerned, that’s definitely a “soak the rich” policy — something progressives like Obama, Pelosi and Reid would love.

The only part they wouldn’t like is the zero tax on corporations. So what’s that about?

In talking to his college audiences, Druckenmiller asks some questions and gives some answers they’ve probably never heard in the sacred halls of academe: “Who owns corporations? Shareholders. But who makes the decisions at corporations? The guys running the companies. So if you tax the shareholder at ordinary income (rates) but you tax the economic actors at zero,” he explains, “you get the actual economic actors incented to hire people, to do capital spending. It’s not the coupon clippers that are making those decisions. It’s the people at the operating level.”

It’s this difference between investors and decision-makers that progressive politicians in Washington don’t understand. That’s because most of them have never run a business, had to make tough management decisions like hiring and firing, or pay corporate taxes that take a big bite out of their operating budget. Even if they own stock in large companies like Verizon and Exxon, most members of Congress probably don’t go to annual stockholder meetings or read 10-K reports. No wonder they don’t understand why corporate taxes have driven so many U.S. companies abroad.

When asked what wiser Republican reformers like Paul Ryan should do now, Druckenmiller recommends means-testing Social Security and Medicare. In other words, these entitlement benefits should be adjusted to income.

He explains by talking about himself. At 60 years old, his personal assets are estimated to be $2.9 billion. So he wonders why, in five years, Uncle Sam will begin sending him a monthly Social Security check for $3,500. “I don’t need it. I don’t want it,” he declares. He also adds, “I didn’t earn it.”

How have Druckenmiller’s college audiences responded to all this?

“‘Even at Berkeley,’ he says, ‘they got it. There is tremendous energy in the room and of course they understand it. I’d say it’s a combination of appalled but motivated. That’s the response I’ve been getting, and it’s been overwhelming.’”

In early March of last year, Druckenmiller also brought his message to public attention during an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s Market Makers. “I am not against seniors,” he told Ruhle. “What I am against is current seniors stealing from future seniors.” Here are some fixes he then recommended to curtail such intergenerational theft:

• Change the eligibility age for Social Security, gradually increasing it from 65 to 68;

• Change the benefit structures for wealthy retirees, so the richer you are, the less you get;

• Eliminate the tax penalty for people who want to work beyond retirement age;

• Fully tax the dividends and capital gains rich retirees receive from investments.

At the end of the interview, Druckenmiller said his next step was to talk to young people directly, including at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me. Drawing special attention to how “obsessed” young people are today with the environment, he declared: “They are looking at the consequences of our actions 50 to 60 years from today. … With the proper education and with proper voices out there, we could have 40 million kids marching down to Washington.”

Some of us may be alarmed by the image of 40 million college kids occupying the Mall in front of the Capitol, but it would be a welcome sign that “sleeping giant” America may finally be waking up.

Bruce Robinson is an author and former Benicia resident.