There is productive consumption and there is non-productive consumption. In the Keynesian mind, it's not necessary to produce anything, so long as people spend and consume endlessly, even to the point of destroying real wealth.
As dismissive as many of us would like to be toward Marx’s thoroughly debunked labor theory of value, it still holds currency among today’s budding socialists.
Hazlitt and all of the other critics of Keynes never did get to the primary points with respect to what was wrong with Keynes. One point was theoretical. The other was practical.
The idea that people are driven by fear of losses more than they are by the potential for gain has attained a sort of dogmatic adherence among behavioral economists. But there's a problem: the theory isn't true.
There is a growing drumbeat from some high-profile economists to reassure Americans that large increases in income and wealth taxes won’t distort labor markets. Yet much of their arguments are very misleading.
The standard Austrian approach to air pollution and regulation rejects the bean-counting of winners and losers, and instead embraces a property rights approach.
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