{"id":48750,"date":"2020-04-06T06:28:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T05:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=48750"},"modified":"2020-04-06T06:28:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T05:28:02","slug":"what-keynes-knew-that-modern-economists-have-seemingly-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/04\/06\/what-keynes-knew-that-modern-economists-have-seemingly-forgotten\/","title":{"rendered":"What Keynes knew that modern economists have seemingly forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I reread Keynes' 1940 book '<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/in.ernet.dli.2015.499597\/page\/n1\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How to Pay for the War<\/a>' last night to prepare for a debate this week (online, of course, and invitation only). This is from page 62:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-48751\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19-550x573.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"573\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19-550x573.png 550w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19-288x300.png 288w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19-768x799.png 768w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19-384x400.png 384w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screenshot-2020-04-05-at-21.03.19.png 1416w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Five thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>First, Keynes understood that a government can create as much cash is it needs, at its own will.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the discussion of foreign reserves was in a de-facto gold standard era: we are no longer on the gold standard.<\/p>\n<p>Third, Keynes understood sectoral balances and that it is government spending that creates private saving.<\/p>\n<p>Fourth, inflation is distortionary of relative value and so distribution within the economy, but not necessarily of physical production, and this issue has to be addressed (the answer was a universal basic income; the family allowance).<\/p>\n<p>Fifth, tax controls inflation.<\/p>\n<p>Why have we forgotten?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I reread Keynes&#8217; 1940 book &#8216;How to Pay for the War&#8217; last night to prepare for a debate this week (online, of course, and invitation<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/04\/06\/what-keynes-knew-that-modern-economists-have-seemingly-forgotten\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}