Just saying:
He was right.
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Keynes was correct eighty-odd years ago and is correct today. A truism, I would claim, yet lost on 95% of economics undergraduates because they won’t get the chance to discuss it with their professors. Their counterclaim will be that this is a normative statement from Keynes, which it is, and doesn’t belong in their mathematical models.
I would argue that Keynes was basing his view on what he believed Economics was really about i.e. optimal allocation of scarce resources for the betterment of society as a whole. This is the definition I would always give to students.
I believe the more modern definition brings profit into it, which for me is something different, namely business raison d’être. That’s fair enough, but society cannot operate as a business and aim for a surplus while neglecting the basic needs of citizens. That last sentence should be obvious to everyone, but it isn’t.
Maybe it’s because( despite Richard’s best efforts) these people believe a deficit is equal to a loss. Keynes knew it wasn’t all those years ago and he was by no means the first economist to know this.
Yes, saw that an posted it to another forum I am on.
No response of course!
As yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, you had the usual fanboys on X, led by that renowned banker Matt Ridley, best known as chairman of Northern Rock when it went down, praising Adam Smith as the archetypal proponent of individualism as the only way forward. Others pointed out that Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist and believed in regulation. Ridley and his followers wouldn’t listen.
Typical! Their denial of reality is consistent. I will give them that.