Friday 29 July 2016

The Consequences of Keynes

is the title of a new essay by Peter J. Boettke (George Mason University - Department of Economics) and Patrick Newman (George Mason University).

The abstract reads:
This paper discusses the consequences of John Maynard Keynes for the science of political economy, or the fields of economics, economic policy, and politics. It argues that the consequences of Keynes in all three fields were negative and resulted in a significant retrogression. For economics, a macroeconomic theory of an unstable capitalist economy supplanted the theory of the market process which concentrated on the individual actions of entrepreneurs and their effects on relative prices and production. For economic policy, activist tinkering on behalf of policy advisors replaced the theory of limited and hands off governments. For politics, unrestricted politicians and continual deficits and inflation replaced restrained politicians who adhered to balanced budgets and sound money.
I'm guessing not a paper that will be to everyone's taste!

1 comment:

Mark Hubbard said...

Add to this the destruction of the arts. He was almost entirely responsible for setting up the funding of the arts in the UK via the public purse.

I wrote a dreadfully long post on that here: http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/literary-ramble-iv-disquisition-on-our.html

I think Keynes has done more harm to the West economically, philosophically and artistically than the entire concerted effort of the USSR through Cold War. Because we knew they were the enemy.