Academic discussion of Keynesian macroeconomics and historical economic theory

beyond depreciation recovery, is simply less consumption with no growth to show for it. My charts and tables show that this has been true wherever and whenever tested, in eight economies over 40 to 140 years. We crowd our niches like other creatures, I think, and have no room for growth except as innovation widens the niche. The charts and tables seem to tell us that innovation costs no more in failure rates and learning curves that daily coping does. Macroeconomics and Keynes Macro emerged in the 1930s under the influence of Keynes. Simon Kuznets, the chief architect of the U.S. national accounts, was one of the five economists Keynes invited to proof the chapters of his General Theory as he wrote them’. National accounts were soon reorganized along Keynesian lines. To read the General Theory, a beautiful work, one would think that counter opinions were led by his close friend Arthur Pigou. But Pigou was already in print with recommendations much like Keynes’ when it was published in 1936. Opposition came rather from Mises, the other Austrians, Lionel Robbins and the Chicago school. They argued that intervention tends to make things worse. So do many economists today. Keynes believed in fiscal and monetary policy as I describe in Chapter 1. He favored fiscal policy. Chapter 2 said that he made a basic distinction between investment producing new things and repurchase of things already produced. Only the first counted as real investment. The difference matters because only the first puts plant and people to work. Transfers neither add nor subtract value. Even so, my own language counts all as investment, and ranks investment only by return. I make no distinction among investment adding new plant and equipment, or investment in stocks and bonds already issued, or in existing structures, or even under the mattress. 3 The others were Harrod, Sraffa, Joan Robinson and Ralph Hawtree. Chapter 8 Banks, Money and Macroeconomics 2/8/16 14 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011103