Re: Re: military keynesianism

[christian11@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

This is really interesting, although the take on Keynesianism in general and the 70's don't seem right to me. In fact, military Keynesianism _did_ deliver, but it didn't deliver in the late 70's b/c it wasn't tried. As Bob Eisner has shown, the US fiscal position was in surplus for the late 70's and early 80's. It wasn't until Reagan's second year that mk was tried, and it worked, after a fashion. At least in terms of producing aggregate growth.

In part due to Reagan's legacy, the promises of military Keynesianism are pretty slim, since they generally mean encouraging US adventurism (the military-spending part), while forcefully asserting counter-Keynesian policies about labor, finance, trade, and full-employment. Absent a real redistribution mechanism--one that acts in the opposite direction of global financial markets--military Keynesianism just doesn't exist, never mind if it could work.

Christian