Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Reisman on Economic Stimulus

As was shown earlier, economic recovery requires greater saving and the accumulation of fresh capital, to make up for the losses caused by credit expansion and the malinvestment and overconsumption that follow from it. Yet the imposition of "stimulus packages" results in the further loss of capital. The Keynesians not only do not know this, but would not care even if they did know it.

Because of their ignorance of the role of capital in the economic system and resulting inability to see even the clearest evidence that suggests it, the Keynesians can conceive of no cause of a recession or depression but an insufficiency of consumption and no remedy but an increase in consumption. This is the basis of their calls for "stimulus packages" of one kind or another...

Even though stimulus packages may be able to generate additional economic activity, they cannot achieve any kind of meaningful economic recovery. Their actual effect is the creation of a system of public welfare in the guise of work. That is in the nature of employing people not for the sake of the products they produce but having them produce products for the sake of being able to employ them...

The blind rush into massive "stimulus packages" is the culmination of generations of economic ignorance transmitted from professor to student in the guise of advanced, revolutionary thinking — the "Keynesian revolution." The accelerating destruction of our economic system that we are now experiencing is the product of a prior destruction of economic thought. Our entire intellectual establishment has been the victim — the willing victim — of a massive intellectual con job that goes under the name "Keynesianism." And we are now paying the price.

read the entire essay

My thoughts: The Keynesian politicans will never let reason, logic, or facts stand in their way or trying to manipulate the economy.

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