Mixed-Up Economy: We are All Bloodsuckers Now

John Maynard Keynes was an intellectual descendant of Karl Marx not of Adam Smith or David Ricardo. The policies he advocated lead, sometimes little by little and sometimes by leaps and bounds, to socialism. Socialism, once achieved, must ultimately fail and leads to the breakdown of society (via the breakdown of the division of labor, as Professor von Mises has explained). From there, who knows: military dictators, back to feudal warring states or tribes or...?

Paul Samuelson was a recent leading Keynesian, who gained prominence by writing the college economics text book that was most in fashion during the 1970's and '80's. Currently we have Nobel prize winning economist and NY Times columnist, Paul Krugman to carry the Keynesian flag. There have been and are many others, they advance the cause of socialism. (Even Richard Nixon made the famous remark, "We are all Keynesians now." He didn't know any better apparently or he was sharing the blame for his deficit spending.)

One of the many faults of Lord Keynes, was that his theories justified government deficit spending. Deficits have a few problems, the biggest being perhaps that they allows greater government intervention in the economy (not to mention inflation). Samuelson explained methods of determining the proper values of various economic parameters and how government could fiddle around to obtain the optimum results. For example, the government needs to and is able to, through taxing and spending, achieve "full employment." Now, by applying Keynes and Samuelson's methods, Mr. Krugman says that BHO's stimulus deficit spending is great, just not enough. (Mr. Krugman also advocates more regulation, which is another story.)

I have linked to a better explanation of these foolish theories that I could ever provide:

http://mises.org/story/3608
　
Economics of Oblivion; Mises Daily by George Koether

A few quotes: "Laissez-faire is dead, long live the "mixed economy!" Unfortunately it is often difficult to tell which is more mixed, the economy or the professors. They try their best to seem as sincerely opposed to "complete" socialism as they are obviously cocksure rugged individualism is gone forever. Their "mixed economy" seems to be a course midway between capitalism and socialism, with careful avoidance of the "bad" in each.
The difficulties they encounter in trying to steer between the Scylla of socialism and the Charybdis of capitalism would be amusing if the implications were not so tragic."
...
"Wrong again. Economics does have great exactitude, but it is a qualitative, not a quantitative exactitude. The economist cannot know the number or size of all the cakes in the world, or when they will be eaten, but he is dead certain that whoever eats his cake no longer has it.
That is more than the Keynesians seem to know. Their theory implies you cannot have your cake until you do eat it. You can spend your way into prosperity. The formulas say so."
...
"This "new economics" is neither new nor economics. Instead, it is a concatenation of statistics, mathematics and social philosophy used in support of the age-old sophistries of government inflationism."

A quote from John Maynard Keynes, revealing what his true wishes were regarding the socialist state: "[T]he sharp distinction, approved by custom and convention during the past two centuries, between the property and rights of a State and the property and rights of its nationals is an artificial one, which is being rapidly put out of date … and is inappropriate to modern socialistic conceptions of the relations between the State and its citizens"- Cf. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York, 1920), p. 71 (quoted in above article.)
According to the author, George Koether, these teaching, because they offer an easy way to prosperity (and for politicians to reward their voters and special interests supporters) have driven out more sensible economic thinking, as debased coinage will drive out the true gold.

Do you renounce BHO and all his empty promises?