Is Keynianism dead?
The Wall Street Journal, having reluctantly arrived at the same conclusions that we Bookwormroom groupies had already formulated, feels that Keynesianism has been totally, totally discredited by recent events
“The economies of Europe and the United States have arrived at the moment when they no longer have any conceivable hope of being able to pay for the huge public commitments they’ve amassed the past 40 years.”
Will this be the end of Keynesian ideology?
Hardly!
After all, look around the globe and we still see many, many people, including many in academic positions, still ideologically fixated on long-discredited beliefs ranging from astrology, rain dances (weather manipulation by humans), alchemy (e.g., transforming government programs into gold), witchcraft (Women’s Studies), Marxism, eugenics, etc, etc.
Keynesianism, like Marxism, represents an ideology of hope that goes against fundamental human nature (economics, after all, is a social science). Fallible human beings easily forget. When the people forget the lessons of these recent years in a generation or so, watch for Keynesianism once again to raise its head and lead us to disaster in the name of “hope”.
