Keynes vs. Hayek, round II

I’d like to see one of these where Keynes’s lines are written by someone who thinks Keynes was right.

I liked the lyrics – the visuals, on the other hand, seemed to play into an Austrian school victimization narrative centered around the idea that since Government makes the decisions, and Keynes supports Government, Keynes always wins – regardless of the merits of the arguments.

This overshadows one of the really important points in the video – Hayek never actually answers Keynes’ question about what one does with the unemployed, instead simply expressing faith that without Government to provide perverse incentives, they’ll figure it out, and everything will be great. To be fair, in the end, both arguments rely an awful lot on faith. But were I confronted with a choice where one alternative was a plan, even with obvious flaws, and other alternative seemed to be “do nothing,” predicated on faith that it would work, I think I’d go with the plan.

I also think that too great an attempt was made to cast Keynes’ position as “any and all government spending in a crisis is a Good Thing,” including simply the funneling of money to cronies of officials. I seriously doubt that Keynes would support such naked corruption in the name of “fiscal stimulus.”

no one finds this inconsistent?

“I want real growth, not a series of bubbles
stop bailing out losers, let prices work”

it seems to me – without any background in all of this – that the Hayekian perspective is perhaps more wise, but the Keynesian perspective is more useful.

Let us not forget that Keynes had a very powerful view of people as being full of blood and muscle – Akerlof makes this point forcefully in his work on norms in macroeconomics – and so could not view the economy as an “engine” as it is being portrayed. Or if he could, then it doesn’t make sense.