Isaac Chan’s Reviews > Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI > Status Update

Notes:
1) Keynes wrote “full employment is a special case, only realised when MPC and the inducement to invest stand in a particular relationship to one another”. So what’s this particular relationship?

2) Do modern empirical economists even believe in the multiplier theory anymore? Recall that commercial banks no longer “multiply up” central bank money after the Fed started paying interest on reserves.

Note 2/2:

This allows one to understand that Keynes wasn't some deficit maniac – he absolutely knew that the budget should be balanced, he just argued that the 'balancing horizon' should be extended.

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I unfortunately find myself feeling like a tremendous idiot now, as I have, for so many years, failed to see this simple logic – that the crux of Keynes's thought is that, instead of balancing the budget every year, the government should balance the budget over the FULL economic CYCLE (i.e. surpluses in good times balancing deficits in bad times).

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... he introduced was a cut in federal salaries. This type of argument reminds me of the new book by Selgin, False Dawn, which I have not yet read.

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I had usually believed in the conventional narrative that Keynes had a big influence on FDR himself and the New Deal, but surprisingly, Cassidy argues against that here. He says Keynes' links to and influence on the Roosevelt administration were 'somewhat tenuous'. For example, FDR was hardly a proto-Keynesian – he had campaigned for office on reducing the federal deficit, and one of the first measures ...

Hobson concluded that the only reason for the British empire to be persuaded to embark on so many imperialist ventures, was that 'the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control ...' I'm thinking, do nations even have 'business interests as a whole'? Krugman taught me – no. (In 'Competitiveness: A dangerous obsession')

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And yes, I have already learned of Hobson and his fascinating theory of underconsumption due to inequality from Kenneth Waltz. The masses cannot spend! And the rich won't spend enough due to satiation and diminishing marginal utility.

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Hobson responded to imperialists like Cecil Rhodes in 1898, who claimed that expanding the British empire was the best way to create markets for British products and jobs for British workers. I wonder – what's wrong with just trading with those countries? Coz you can't force them to accept your terms?

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... Veblen's time), but these days the folk wisdom goes that only the poor pretend to be rich, and thus make fucktard purchases, whereas the rich have nothing to prove and thus are smart with their money. And it's precisely that the rich are smart, that they became rich in the 1st place. It would be unwise to generalize tho, ofc.

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But now, I think: 'Every spending has an opportunity cost. That stimulus to the producers of said wasteful goods is just what is seen. What is not seen is the spending that would've been otherwise directed towards useful goods, or even productive investment in the real economy. Thus that conspicuous consumption is a waste, at the end of the day, similar to the broken window.'