Summary
The economic theory of Keynes's day, which precluded boom-bust sequences, seemed patently contrary to experience, yet its foundations were so deep -dug, its defences so secure, its reasoning so compelling, that it took Keynes three big books - including a two -volume Treatise on Money - to see how it might be cracked. Not only can we calculate the probability of winning the Lottery, but we can forecast with tolerable accuracy the price movements of consumer goods over a short period.\n The truth was that "scientific" economics could not live with the idea of an unpredictable world.
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A Thinker for Our Times
John Maynard Keynes has been restored to life. Rusty Keynesian tools - larger budget deficits, tax cuts, accelerated spendingprogrammes and other "economic stimuli" - have been brought back into use the world over to cut off the slide into depression. And they will do the job, if not next year, the year after. But the first Keynesian revolution was not about a rescue operation. Its purpose was to explain how shipwreck might occur; in short, to provide a theoretical basis for better navigation and for steering in seas that were bound to be choppy. Yet, even while the rescue operation is going on, we need to look critically at the economic theory that takes his name.
In his great work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, written during the Great Depression of the 19303, Keynes said of his ideas that they were "extremely simple, and sh...See the full content of this document
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