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My Economics Professor Hates John Maynard Keynes

I'm taking an economics course this semester. It's Econ 110. The professor gave us a supplementary book to read along with the textbook. It's called, "How an Economy Grows and Crashes". The introduction is basically just 12 pages of the author bashing Keynesian economics and going on a rant about spending your way to prosperity.

A curious observation emerged before me as well.

Flagrant "liberal indoctrination" in our colleges and universities, the indoctrination that conservatives assert to be the reason why kids today aren't going for conservatism, yeah that, is all the way absent from this class. I had an idea by the way my professor lectured that he disapproves of old John Maynard Keynes, but reading the intro in this supplementary book just confirmed it.

Should be a fun semester as I divulge more of my personal opinions during in-class discussions.

I suspect the professor's motive may be to provoke thought. Keynes theories were from the 30's depression and before large scale centralized banking. Hell, we were still on the gold standard.

If I were you, I'd run an intelligence OP and find out what the professor wrote his doctoral or masters thesis on. It may be Googleable, or you can be sneaky and dig through local information like his introduction when he was hired.

You have to know your "judge" and how he views the world to get top grades. People naturally like people who think like they do. It's all a game about knowledge you will learn from, but will never use! Do be careful with your own opinions. Your job is to get top grades. After you leave college, no one will ask you anything about economics again. (Unless you become an economist or a economic professor...LOL).
 
Or schizophrenic.... That is the thing I like about Keynes. His idea that during the bad times, we use government to prop up the private sector, so it can recover, and when the private sector yet again can drive the economy, the public sector cuts back to then again save up for the next cluster**** the private sector does. Problem is, very few governments actually do that. Take the US.. during Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr the economy was booming at different points.. hence the federal government should have been paying back its debt and running a surplus. It did not.. in fact the deficit grew because spending grew. Cheap credit did not help the situation either, and that is where monetary policy comes in.. since that does not work either as it is far to easy to manipulate... the human aspect again.

I can almost count on one hand, countries and governments who during good times have achieved a surplus or close to one, so that the debt was being paid back. My own country did this and has been doing it for decades now, and it has basically gotten rid of our foreign debt (cant get rid of it all due to trade and timing). Now if they would do the same for internal debt, then well..

People tend to embrace extremes. Keynes is the most misunderstood man on any American campus.
 
People tend to embrace extremes. Keynes is the most misunderstood man on any American campus.

That is in part due to the right wing of economic theory, aka monetarism and such, being successful over time to link him to so called socialism. Happens all the time when talking the US right.. just as Obamacare the basics being in principle a GOP idea, until it was not because the left embraced it as well.. really a pathetic way of doing things. Pragmatism all the way.. do what works, not what an ideolog thinks may work under certain unobtainable conditions.
 
That is in part due to the right wing of economic theory, aka monetarism and such, being successful over time to link him to so called socialism. Happens all the time when talking the US right.. just as Obamacare the basics being in principle a GOP idea, until it was not because the left embraced it as well.. really a pathetic way of doing things. Pragmatism all the way.. do what works, not what an ideolog thinks may work under certain unobtainable conditions.

The left does it too in my opinion. They love the stimulus stuff, they just don't care to acknowledge the austerity stuff.
 
The problem with economic theories is that they get infected by politics.

DEpsite overwhelming eidence that nothin works all the time nor fails all the time, how many times do you hear people say things like:

" Supply side doesn't work" " Keynesian economics doesn't work" , or the old standy " ______ has been discredited".
 
The left does it too in my opinion. They love the stimulus stuff, they just don't care to acknowledge the austerity stuff.

Exactly. Stimulus does work, but it requires you later on pay for it via austerity.. maybe austerity is the wrong word, since you should be just going back to normal.
 
Well did he also give "extra materials" about theories that debunk his views? Or even alternative alternative economic theories not covered by the official course material, and the opposite of his own views? Most likely not, unless we are not told the whole story.

Regardless, the students should go after him in class for peddling this crap and can easily debunk his views. Problem is, will it impact their grade?

I don't think you have a firm grasp on what fascism is. Try the dictionary.

Hint, disagreeing with leftist loons is NOT, the definition of fascism. ;)
 
Ill post some links but given your post history I really wonder if its just going to wind up being a collosal waste of my time
Between your rabid Trump hate and your predilection for Left wing ideas in general I wonder if you have the time or inclination to consider anything that doesnt align with your ideological bias.
But here goes nothing....Japans never ending Keynesian nightmare

But I asked you to back your claim:
mach said:
"long record of miserable failure". A long record would be some sort of summaries, meta studies, etc., not a single cherry picked one.

Citing "Japan" is not a long record of miserable failure. Sorry, that's not a partisan issue, it's just not sufficient to back what you claimed.
You could say it's not perfect, or it's not the only school, or it's not useful in all situations, but a long record of miserable failure? You've got nothing.

Which school of economic thought are you suggesting has a long record of success in contrast? Let's examine your proposed alternative economic school of thought, we can then compare it to modern keynesian influenced economic frameworks (which I'd be fumbling around with as I'm no economist).

The typical alternative I see is "just let it all crash". Probably why it's not mainstream.
 
I don't think you have a firm grasp on what fascism is. Try the dictionary.

Hint, disagreeing with leftist loons is NOT, the definition of fascism. ;)

Problem is... Keynesianism.. aint "leftist loons"
 
Exactly. Stimulus does work, but it requires you later on pay for it via austerity.. maybe austerity is the wrong word, since you should be just going back to normal.

No, austerity is the right word. It's just a very hard sell when thing are going well. It's also a hard sell when things aren't going well. In fact, it seems like the very reason why Keynesian economics has "never really been implemented".

Just like the inherent weakness to market based, unrestrained capitalism in the Austrian model happens to be the people involved, so, too, do people ruin Keynesian theory by being themselves.

The two conflicting systems share the same weakness.
 
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That's ONE example, cited 3 times. Japan. Whoopty doooo.

How about Chile? In fact, several South American countries. The US? List some success stories brought about by the Chicago school. Oh, wait....there are none. Not even Austria believes in Austrian economics.

"" Woopty doo ! " isnt a intelliegent rebuttal for any topic let alone a thread on the efficacy of Keynesian economics.

You surely can do better

For a decade Japan stuck to the Keynesian playbook to the letter. They blew throuhg 100 Trillion yen via 10 seperate stimulus iniatives investing heavily on infrastructure.

Japan now has the highest debt to GDP ratio among developed Countires.

The idea that a Govt can successfully replace private sector capital investment only really appeals to Left wing progressives who have no clue how healthy economies actually function

Thats why his econ proffessor is so adamantly against it
 
Exactly. Stimulus does work, but it requires you later on pay for it via austerity.. maybe austerity is the wrong word, since you should be just going back to normal.

And "normal" is the problem, isn't it?
 
No. That's actually rational economics.

Marketing is convincing people they should have what they do not really need, preferably selling it to them with a very high gross margin. Examples: $5000 watches, $300 gym shoes, $25 glasses of wine, and $2 bottles of water.

It is marketing in its simplest form. Margin has nothing to do with it. Price competition does. You are describing luxury brand marketing, a type of marketing. If people don't want it, marketing won't have any effect.
 
"" Woopty doo ! " isnt a intelliegent rebuttal for any topic let alone a thread on the efficacy of Keynesian economics.

You surely can do better

For a decade Japan stuck to the Keynesian playbook to the letter. They blew throuhg 100 Trillion yen via 10 seperate stimulus iniatives investing heavily on infrastructure.

Japan now has the highest debt to GDP ratio among developed Countires.

The idea that a Govt can successfully replace private sector capital investment only really appeals to Left wing progressives who have no clue how healthy economies actually function

Thats why his econ proffessor is so adamantly against it

You have one example. One.


I have multiple. Care to dispute that incongruence?
 
Don't feel bad. I think the discipline of economics is itself mostly nonsense. I disagree with all the economists simply because they can't agree with each other. There is no economic model that has worked as expected. That is because economics is not about theories and models. It is about people and people are unpredictable.

Yeah. Economics is a lot like the weather. Meteorologists are great at explaining why something happened the way it did after the fact but before the fact it is nothing but predictions and guesswork. Of course it is "educated" predictions and guesswork but many times those predictions and guesswork wind up being wrong. If it was so easy then all economists and meteorologists would be right all the time and would all agree with each other.
 
IMO, agreement with someone in politics isn't a good predictor of intelligence. Since I disagree with him, does that make him dumb?

But, I get what youre saying, if he believes in austrian economics, and is choosing to teach that in his classroom he must be smart.

Can't say anything about the professor but I can suggest to you to have an open mind. Seems like you are going into this already disagreeing and with a closed mind. Economics should be economics and not politics. I don't think you realize that. You base your economic thoughts based solely on politics, fighting for the little guy, economics be damned. Economics isn't about the little guy.
 
Flagrant "liberal indoctrination" in our colleges and universities, the indoctrination that conservatives assert to be the reason why kids today aren't going for conservatism, yeah that, is all the way absent from this class. I had an idea by the way my professor lectured that he disapproves of old John Maynard Keynes, but reading the intro in this supplementary book just confirmed it.

Take a class in sociology or women's studies, then get back to us.
 
You have one example. One.


I have multiple. Care to dispute that incongruence?

Obama's stimulus is another example, and you really only need one example to prove that Keynesian economics doesnt work and Japan followed tbe Keynesian play book to the letter

The inherent flaws of stimulus do not just disappear the more times its tried. Japan blew through 10 seperate stimuluses in the 90s and all they wound up with was massive debt
 
It's not simply a fault of derivatives regulation he's admitting to; the admission goes substantially beyond that.



Dealing with people in the top 1% (and higher) regularly in my day to day business (commercial real estate and finance), I definitely see that the majority of them who express political and economic views tend to lean Austrian or something similar if not quite altogether there, for what appears to be ultimately and largely self-interested reasons. A couple of the more honest ones I've spoken with also find it hilarious that there are poor and middle class people foolish enough to champion and promote these sorts of ideas against their own best interests; one even went so far as to call them 'useful idiots', and that he welcomed their help in making him even better off at their expense, because why not?

I live comfortably myself, but dealing constantly with people like this, who are either lost in personal bubbles of rationalization, self-promotion, congratulation and denial, or who knowingly and brutally embrace their self-serving beliefs, saying cruel and callous things make my stomach turn and my temper surge has never made me more resolute in opposing them politically, regardless of what it might cost me.

You're filling in a whole lot of dots that are not there, simply based on your prejudice.
 
OK then, have fun. If you need the credits, though...don't argue, just smile and nod your head.


If you REALLY want to burst his bubble, ask him why, if Keynes is so wrong, did Greenspan, "the wizard" himself, admit, before congress, the abject failure of supply side, trickle down economics, and denounce its effectiveness.

That should get a solid good debate going, lol.

You can also ask him why, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, countries like the U.S., that used Keynesian economics to create policies, ended up doing much better than European economies that embraced austerity?

Here is a good read:
John and Maynard’s Excellent Adventure

..
The basic macroeconomic framework that we all should have turned to, the framework that is still there in most textbooks, performed spectacularly well: it made strong predictions that people who didn’t know that framework found completely implausible, and those predictions were vindicated. And the framework in question – basically John Hicks’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes – was very much the natural way to think about the issues facing advanced countries after 2008.
...

Other reading:

Introduction by Paul Krugman to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes


Harvard's Greg Mankiw's and why he uses the IS-LM Model
 
Can't say anything about the professor but I can suggest to you to have an open mind. Seems like you are going into this already disagreeing and with a closed mind. Economics should be economics and not politics. I don't think you realize that. You base your economic thoughts based solely on politics, fighting for the little guy, economics be damned. Economics isn't about the little guy.
Keynes is economics and not politics.

Those of us [economists] who understood IS-LM and took it seriously declared *in advance* — in late 2008 and early 2009 — that big deficits and huge increases in the monetary base would lead neither to soaring interest rates nor to soaring inflation. This was very much not what many influential people were saying: there were widespread forecasts of soaring rates and soaring inflation. Later, there were many people denying that austerity would have negative effects on output. So we’re talking about a genuine predictive success — actually, multiple predictive successes — relative to what many supposed experts were claiming.https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/what-i-mean-when-i-talk-about-is-lm-wonkish/

Here's a good post on this topic: Conservatives and Keynes
 
Japan followed tbe Keynesian play book to the letter

They did nothing of the sort. Japan was actually running surpluses when the real estate bubble collapsed and did so for years following. It was years later that they actually began running large fiscal deficits while simultaneously pushing interest rates low enough for it to stimulate their economy. In fact, it took a Japanese experiment to actually write the Keynesian stimulus playbook... and they miscalculated along the way.

When the U.S. was hit by a similar shock, we were more aware of what was necessary, which is why the U.S. made such a quicker and more broad recovery.

The inherent flaws of stimulus do not just disappear the more times its tried. Japan blew through 10 seperate stimuluses in the 90s and all they wound up with was massive debt

You don't know what you're talking about, and you believe you can substitute a coherent understanding of macroeconomic policy with blind partisanship.
 
You're filling in a whole lot of dots that are not there, simply based on your prejudice.

Why bother with such a response if you won't even bother pointing out what dots he is mistakenly "filling"?
 
Why bother with such a response if you won't even bother pointing out what dots he is mistakenly "filling"?

When you go off course by that much it is a waste of my time to deal with it all. It's like a celestial object that is off course by a mere .001% at the time but after millions of miles it is considerably off course and he is dealing with multiple celestial objects, not just one. Anyone who makes a bunch of dots up to suit their agenda isn't interested in a serious debate. Their mind is made up and celestial objects are near impossible to put back on course.
 
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