re: #535 Killgore Trout

Unfortunately Keynesian economics has become a talking point boogey man like “socialism”. The vast majority of the people claiming that Keynesian economics has been discredited have no clue what they’re talking about.

Yep. At it’s most basic, Keynesian economics says a lot of things that almost nobody contends with: That spending of money, rather than the price of labor, determines the level of employment (which we can see proved very well right now), at least in any short term, and that capital has marginal utility.

People basically pretend that Keynesian theory boils down to ‘government spending is always good’, and ignore the actual theory and what came after it.

Further, like any economic theory, it didn’t stop with Keynes. Just as Darwin had no clue what DNA was, Keynes didn’t write a be-all and end-all of economics. He wrote an excellent critique of orthodox theory, and moved the field forwards.