NO, KEYNESIANISM IS ACTUALLY LEGIT

A lot more legit, in fact, than the bullshit that passes for economics in Washington these days.

Okay, another facebook comment I made, in response to a comment responding to this Rachel Maddow video clip from 2011.

Here's my prompt:

Michael Of course, you're only hearing one side of the story here - Rachel Maddow's PC argument that the solution for unemployment is government-financed jobs (and anyone who impedes this is a villain). Some of us believe increased employment can only come from the traditional source of the great majority of American jobs - private business. And I don't doubt for one second that Rachel Maddow would mint coins with her picture on them.

And here's my response:

Ronald Since when has standard Keynesian economics been PC? Nobody even seems to know about it anymore, for that matter. Bottom line, when the capitalists aren't delivering the goods, that is, when production is low, and capital and workers sit idle, the government should increase demand, either by giving out free money to ordinary regular people who don't have jobs, or, better yet, putting those people to work so as to make that money a long term investment in the nation, with infrastructure building, education, or (gasp) creating great art all around the nation, which is what we did in the 1930s.

Of course, it took WWII to end conservative obstruction, which allowed us to really get government spending in gear so as to reach full production capacity, which, as we all know, is what ended the Great Depression--we managed to pay off the debt incurred, by way of the post-war booming economy, within a decade. And we can still do that today. If we want. The overall economic issue, a huge gap between demand and production capacity, is extraordinarily similar to what we faced in the 30s. But our politics are so dysfunctional, and conservatives are so totally off in outer space, that it's unlikely that even WWIII would be enough to end the fantasy/folk economics of the right that are so popular today.

This is real. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman recently asserted that, since the financial collapse of 2007, our economy has effectively failed to produce some two trillion dollars worth of goods and services that it could have produced. Think about that for a moment. Two trillion dollars. Down the drain. All because "socialism is bad" or "job creators" or "private property" or something. And this is why our children are in huge classes right now, with their educational prospects diminishing by the moment. This is why infrastructure is crumbling. This is why people are out of work. And on and on. Two trillion dollars. Because "socialism is bad."

Jeez, Keynesianism is about SAVING CAPITALISM from its own weird excesses and short-sightedness. Certainly not socialism.

Excelsior!

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