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Republicans like to say they aren't Keynesian, but that is wrong. Keynes says deficit spending should occur when a bubble (business cycle) bursts, in order to f
by seaourfreed 6y ago
Republicans like to say they aren't Keynesian, but that is wrong. Keynes says deficit spending should occur when a bubble (business cycle) bursts, in order to force full employment when mass unemployment would happen.
But in the USA in the last 50 years, politicians deficit spend every year. They deficit spend in all stages of bubbles. They deficit spend when there is already full employment. "Politician macroeconomics" is far more deficit spending than Keynes.
This includes Republicans. They just do it with tax cuts and increased defense spending to create deficit spending.
- FabHK 6y agoYou’re completely correct that Republicans fret and complain about the deficit when a Democrat president is in office and social spending and aid for the poor is concerned, and then turn around and institute huge gratuitous tax cuts when they’re in power (the deficit be damned), and empirically increase the deficit more than Democrat presidents. I’d call that hypocrisy though, not principled and appropriate Keynesianism. Remember for example the opposition to the Obama stimulus after the financial crisis, which promptly resulted in a stimulus package that was too small and needlessly slowed recovery, followed by Trump’s tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. Keynes calls for anti cyclical spending, not indiscriminate one.