Word: keynesism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Keynes' basic idea was simple. In order to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing. That's because the private sector won't invest enough. As their markets become saturated, businesses reduce their investments, setting in motion a dangerous cycle: less investment, fewer...
Even then, Keynes had a hard sell. Most economists of the era rejected his idea and favored balanced budgets. Most politicians didn't understand his idea to begin with. "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist...
Yet not until the U.S. entered World War II did F.D.R. try Keynes' idea on a scale necessary to pull the nation out of the doldrums--and Roosevelt, of course, had little choice. The big surprise was just how productive America could be when given the chance. Between 1939 and...
Never before had an economic theory been so dramatically tested. Even granted the special circumstances of war mobilization, it seemed to work exactly as Keynes predicted. The grand experiment even won over many Republicans. America's Employment Act of 1946--the year Keynes died--codified the new wisdom, making it...
Keynes had no patience with economic theorists who assumed that everything would work out in the long run. "This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs," he wrote early in his career. "In the long run we are all dead."