The City on the Hill, a two act drama.
Act One.
In the year of our Lord 2009 it was decreed that in order to foster prosperity and economic recovery, a city would be built on a hill, composed of federal employees paid to sit and surf YouTube and Facebook all day. It was decreed that they be paid one third more than private sector people employed to do largely the same thing, since such money would stimulate the economy.
The city was built, and lo and behold private businesses soon surrounded it. Movie theaters were built; strip malls were built; restaurants–especially sushi bars–were built. Soon enough, our 5,000 internet surfers had created 10,000 private sector jobs.
Everything was well. Paul Krugman flipped off Friedrich Hayek, and said “Screw you, buddy, we rule”.
Act Two
Then the money ran out. All the Federal employees were let go, and all the businesses that depended on them folded. Everyone moved away and never came back. Paul Krugman was seen wringing his hands, wandering off into the sunset, muttering “if only we had spent more money”.
The End.
4 replies on “Keynes in a nutshell”
First time visiting your blog for me – I saw a link in a comment you posted on NR about Krugman.
About Keynes. . . I have a BS in Economics from AZ State in 1996. The lower level econ classes all glorified keynes models as simply elegant. But the upper level 300+ classes that went deeper into the model showed it to fail.
Since I got out of school, I always figured Keynesian followers had only taken introductory level classes.
Now I am thinking the keynsians are biased towards government involvement. They have to be just picking parts they like while ignoring the rest.
I'm going to go read some more of your posts.
Check out this essay, which I also wrote: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/keynes.pdf
What people have to realize about Keynes is that he was a political and social radical, and that his system was intended, in the end, to bring the means of production under the control–if not the outright ownership–of the State. As I realized yesterday, China has a nearly perfect Keynesian Fascist State, and I use the term Fascist clinically. Mussollini himself was a fan of Keynes, for reasons I try to make clear.
The larger series is here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page14.html
http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/keynes.pdf
Try that.
Nope. Please just go to that page, which did come through. The Keynes piece is linked on his picture at the bottom, if you scroll down.