Is this man the best economist of the 20th century. Has anyone read his works?

Is this man the best economist of the 20th century. Has anyone read his works?

>Has anyone read his works?
Considering he was the most influential economist of the 20th century I'd imagine so

Friedman was the best communicator to lay people tho

He was the most influential economist of the twentieth century. Unfortunately he was not also the best. And yes I have read his works.

To further elaborate. While his classifications of money into commodity, managed, and fiat currencies is especially useful for talk in the field of monetary policy he has issues with most of the big picture stuff and his math is inconsistent and self serving. Keynes also further destabilizes what he claims is an unstable system by calling for government intervention in the economy. Now he does not call for it to the extent that it has been enacted with his theories as a justification but the simple abuse of the justification should have been easy to see coming. Honestly I would recommend reading The failure of the new economics by Henry Hazlitt for a good critique of Keynes' system.

There are far too many Austrian fags on Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums.

I find Keynes economics very well thought out. Much moreso than Von Mises, for example. He seems to have cross examined their works very closely.

One thing they share an opinion on, though, is government handouts. Instead of subsidies and mandated floor incomes for people, Keynes says that investing actually increases the amount of employment while those other techniques just reduce the value of the monetary nit. Unfortunately, Keynesianism and Austrian economics are at ends with almost every other single issue. They both disliked socialism as well.

The General Theory is an unbelievably intelligent work and quite frankly I do not think you have given it the respect it deserves. To view economics in the light of a system of equations is unbelievably conceptually helpful and functional (literally, hehe), because you can plug in variables and work backwards to find other variables or other effects a change in the variable might have. A lot of work by even Irving Fisher, for instance, is not this pleasant.

Keynes thought very hard about sociological and mathematical effects of economics. Every chapter of this book is a whirlwind of knowledge so intense I have to break up even the shortest chapter so I can comprehend it all. It's incredible.

Von Mises wa extremely intelligent and well read, but they are at ends with each other, and I think quite frankly Keynes is more well read than most economists even. I see so many different kinds of authors referenced. I think Keynes economic system is beautifully mapped out, and he at least grasped at the beautiful idea that leaving economics to laissez-faire policies is NOT a fundamentally wise decision.

>They both disliked socialism as well
If so, then Keynes did not think about a way to counter the characteristic socialism that arises when government intervention goes off board as points out.

Government intervention does not equal socialism. If we continue down this road, you will be called a retard.

Keynes problem with Socialism stemmed from the fact that the marginal pricing of goods was measured by wage units, not time as Marx stipulated.

Yes, Keynes' economics as written are well thought out the problems are that his math is logically inconsistent and self serving and his system is too ripe for exploitation by the government. If the government could be trusted to follow his system to the letter it would work. However the government will not follow the limits he set in his policy to the letter as witnessed by history. (For example he was alright with government deficit in the short run that would return to a surplus. Something that has never happened). He failed to see that his allowance of the government to intervene in the economy will eventually lead towards socialist policy to the fallibility of men and the corrupting nature of power. The Laissez-faire system worked for millennia and literally built the west.

I admit my statement might have come out a bit more pugnacious than I intend. I would still recommend reading the criticism simply because I think it makes some excellent points.

>The Laissez-faire system worked for millennia and literally built the west.
But the reason I think Keynes is so much more realistic than other economists is because he is empirical and realistic. His economics are partially based on what was already taking place. Like for example the railroads. Or the examples for digging gold, a system which Keynes agreed with as well, add another tally point to things that Mises and hm would agree on.

However, the laissez-faire system is not good. It's definitely not perfect. Adam Smith didn't think so either, as the manufacturers would have monied interests in the legislature. The role of government was to walk around this whole system by INTELLIGENTLY investing into the economy through government jobs or increased activity in productive sectors or industries which would provide the highest amount of employment gains. Because it IS possible to invest money poorly in one place than in other places, which is why you investing money in your best interest may not be the best place for your money for jobs for the economy

Far from the best.

You're surprised that an economic system built on the inefficiencies of government predicted a crash that the economic theory based on the efficiency of government intervention didn't predict? I hate to burst your bubble...

Also what does everyone ITT think about Mises theory that 'listing the currency as backed by the actual commodity of gold or even the gold-exchange would raise the value of gold' being wrong completely shown by the wikipedia graph of gold's price after the Bretton-Woods agreement?

BTFO.

>But the reason I think Keynes is so much more realistic than other economists is because he is empirical and realistic
This is the main difference between Austrians and Keynesians economically Austrians look at economics as a science in the manner of philosophy where we can find a priori truths but not empirical truths. Keynesians believe in the existence of empirical economic truths and, often times, do not believe in the a priori truths rather claiming to have arrived at them a posteriori.

The issue with looking back at Adam Smith, specifically where government is involved, is that government is vastly different today than it was back then. The vast majority off governments throughout human history that Adam Smith was looking at would be comparable to a private business, where the state government for Austria was the same as the von Hapsburg's personal budget for example, and at a tie where the ability of the State to tax was still relatively new. That being said I a going to have to ask for a source on Adam Smith agreeing that
>The role of government was to walk around this whole system by INTELLIGENTLY investing into the economy through government jobs or increased activity in productive sectors or industries which would provide the highest amount of employment gains. Because it IS possible to invest money poorly in one place than in other places, which is why you investing money in your best interest may not be the best place for your money for jobs for the economy.

KIDF please

>retarded austrian can only communicate through memes and infopics
How surprising!

Keynescucks can only communicate through failures.

Just to clarify, perhaps I should have added a paragraph break after that statement in what Adam Smith believed in. Because that last part of your post was a belief of Keynes, and deviated from Classical economics greatly. Obviously. Now lets get started.

>This is the main difference between Austrians and Keynesians economically Austrians look at economics as a science in the manner of philosophy where we can find a priori truths but not empirical truths
Now this theory... where does it come from exactly? Austrian economics was extremely empirical. Both Keynes and Von Mises consistently used examples of the past to justify their views on economics, Von Mises even moreso than Keynes. Their systems of economics were different. Keyens viewed everything as a delicate system of variables which could throw the entire system into a different swing. Not even only that, if the DERIVATIVES of certain functions got to a certain slope something special could happen too. For instance if the rate of interest started rising at a rate faster than itself compounded, Keynes said that investors would rationally pull out of long-term investments.

Von Mises was a practical man as well, but no equations at all. AT. ALL. He took a completely institutional approach to economics, choosing to analyze it all from the point of view of the marginal values of the products in the psychological estimations of the participating citizens.
>The issue with looking back at Adam Smith, specifically where government is involved, is that government is vastly different today than it was back then.
THAT aspect of government. The part where money influences legislature. Is OBVIOUSLY not different today. That's why I loved the summary of the first Book of the Wealth of Nations the first time I read it. It can just as easily be applied today.

What Keynes is trying to say, is why do you think the economy performs better when it pays the gold miners and they DON'T discover gold personally as long as some others do?

>where does it come from exactly?
Not him, but praxeology uses extreme apriorism.

At times, but it can be extremely empirical as well.

It does theorize a lot, but mostly in The Theory of Money and Credit, it was a lot of money categorization, definition, and using a posteriori reasoning to justify the fiat currency backed by the gold standard against the gold-exchange standard. And using a priori reasoning to say that the fiat currency backed by nothing would be much worse than if backed by gold.

>Keyens viewed everything as a delicate system of variables which could throw the entire system into a different swing.
This is one of his biggest issues though. Under Keynes you have income Y, investment I, Consumption C, and Savings s. In the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money Keynes notes that
Y=C+I
s=Y-C
I=s
but where are work and production in these equations? nowhere Keynes and if you read that chapter they are not mentioned in any equations dealing with income. This logically makes no sense and stabs the entire theory in the back.

Now Mises has no equations but he's doing philosophy and not math. "A treatise on political economy will ... be confined to the enunciation of a few general principles, not requiring even the support of proofs or illustrations; because these will be but the expression of what every one will know, arranged in a form convenient for comprehending them, as well as in their whole scope as in their relation to each other." stated Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy. This is the, rather orthodox, spirit in which Mises is writing as such his generalizations have often been already proved or he goes through the trouble of explaining the logic behind it. Though the second part happens more in Human Action than most of his other books.

>THAT aspect of government. The part where money influences legislature. Is OBVIOUSLY not different today. That's why I loved the summary of the first Book of the Wealth of Nations the first time I read it. It can just as easily be applied today.
Yes this will always exist but it has existed forever and it has been dealt with forever now will it get harder to deal with as the industrial revolution and the globalization of the economy happen? Yes. But the market is resilient and will be able to fix it. Adam Smith really only wanted the government around to provide and army and build roads.

yes, yes.

The best part is that largely the first equation is the macro one, and the second the micro essentially. Savings equals investments because there is a reaction at the financial institutional level to the act of saving by the individual corresponding to his level of consumption.

Keynes only ever deals with macroeconomics, but I'm just showing how genius the situation is, he is looking at the two variables from two different origins entirely, looking at it from one angle: the individual saver, and from the other: the bank. He later gives some concessions, and says that there may be minor inconsistencies in the theory, where the rate of savings does not equal investments. But overall, they should always be equal. They are very different things though, as defined by Keynes. The rates are the same, but they are different actions entirely, and can become imbalanced by changes in income or changes in the derivative of the natural rate of interest.

Now lets move onto your main quandary.
>but where are work and production in these equations?
Why does there have to be either? Irving Fisher was another brilliant economist, his view of interest hinged on income and willingness to borrow/lend. That's it. He had an even less institutional view of interest than Keynes or Mises, and thought interest the product of supply and demand, and intermittent meddling through the Federal reserve banks in case of a danger of reserve depletion. But they are so similar because that is all they used: income. Keynes used income and consumption and supply and demand and various psychological factors to determine the interest rate. Fisher used 6 basic principles, or equations, to determine the interest rate, involving expected future incomes and market clearing principles in the loan market. Essentially a bunch of supply and demand, and you guessed it, a bunch of psychological factors, some of which are very similar. The income curve, which is shaped as the lower hyperbola in Fisher's graph, and the supply curve in Keynes representation of his view of classical economic theory of interest he agreed with in chapter 14, serve as the point which measures the rate of interest because work is not necessary at all to determine interest.

I mean hell, even J.S. Mill, who had a classical view of economics, didn't view interest as anything but the product of a bunch of supply and demand for loans. Essentially how Von Mises viewed it, with some caveats for institutionally set rates and contract theory. Anyway, work and production are just not necessary for any view of Savings/Investment.

Mill's sprawling 500 split-page Principles was also without a single equation until the Purchasing Power Parity equation was added in a later edition, so I know what a good economics book without any equations reads like too, and I didn't not enjoy Mises' Theory of Money and Credit, it's all very interesting. I just was really impressed with the level of comprehensive analysis that went into The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.

Adam Smith thought taxing necessary, even beneficial in some areas.

He would definitely approve of how the government is trying to ween people off cigarettes by increasing the taxes unreasonably these days.

If it doesn't work on the smallest possible state it can't really be considered a good macro economic equation now can it?

Is that a running criticism of those two equations of Keynes'? That they've failed empirically on some level somewhere?

Determining savings being equal to income minus consumption works on the micro level. Aggregate income equaling aggregate consumption plus Investment is definitely not appropriate for an individual, seeing as the state and financial institutions are who invest.

>where the state government for Austria was the same as the von Hapsburg's personal budget for example, and at a tie where the ability of the State to tax was still relatively new.
maybe in theory the king could do anything with his money, but you clearly haven't read history if you really think this...

>The Laissez-faire system worked for millennia and literally built the west
That is not true at all

Considering that the greatest economic boom in history from '45 till '73 was achieved mainly due to Keynesian policies, i'd say he was pretty good.

Socialism has never arisen from government overreach. I believe you are conflating welfare capitalism (social democracy), which is sometimes confusingly referred to as "socialism" with actual socialism, as in an economic system in which ownership of capital is illegal and the market does not exist.

They are very different concepts with few similarities.

Markets can exist under socialism (market socialism), but you're otherwise pretty correct.

Why are British economists always the best? Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Keynes

Rest of the world, are you even trying?

What about the stagflation that took place after?