I got to thinking about ideas and intentions hearing the left scream for health care and wondered " Was Keynes a Socialist and looked for a way to justify Big Government, or was he just an economist who thought government could increase employment and utility? "
In short was he a big government advocate or economic utilitarian?
Democracy is nothing more than replacing bullets with ballots
If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?
Actually, I think he was good at marketing... He felt that there was a huge market for a theory which would justify increased government spending and influence yet at the same time it would be good for general population. Sure winner...
Plus bankers can earn a lot of money in the process, too. He was the magician. His theory is about what you see and what you don't see and how to distract people from seeing what they should see.
His theory I usually compare to childish belief that you could eat the cake by really small bites, not visible. You could eat the whole cake and nobody would notice it is gone. That's part one of the plan: slowly steal money. Don't let the people see it. When people eventually see it, blame the speculators and the failure of the market. Conspiracy theory fits nicely.
Also, use the fact that 99% of population does not know how to read graphs. Major distraction can be done that way.
When all else have failed, intervene by the same medicine that caused the problem to "fix the problem". Get nice credit for that, because you can always claim it would be much worse if you didn't do it.
That is a good question to ask. Keynes was a member of the Fabian Society, so I would say yes, he was a socialist to some extent. Maybe more than we realize.
Read about the Fabians here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society
"La cuestión es siempre la misma: que el gobierno o el mercado. No hay tercera solución." -Ludwig von Mises
Actually Keynes was more of a fascist.
http://mises.org/MultiMedia/mp3/Keynes89/07_Keynes_Rothbard.mp3
'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition
azazel: His theory I usually compare to childish belief that you could eat the cake by really small bites, not visible. You could eat the whole cake and nobody would notice it is gone. That's part one of the plan: slowly steal money. Don't let the people see it. When people eventually see it, blame the speculators and the failure of the market. Conspiracy theory fits nicely.
Actually, I like to paraphrase his ideas as "you can't have your cake until you eat it"
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