Keynes on the war economy

[michael <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Keynes was hardly a radical, but think of how far we are from Keynes'
proposal today!


Keynes, John Maynard. 1940, "United States and the Keynes Plan." The New
Republic (29 July); reprinted in CW, 22, pp. 144-55.
 145: "at the end of the war it is the profit-earning class which owns,
in the shape of holdings in the national war debt, a claim on future
production; which the wage-earning class, in spite of the extra work
downs, owns nothing, having lost the right to consume now and having
gained no rights to consumer hereafter."
 144-5: He proposes a deferred pay, so that people will have something
to show for their efforts after the war."
 147: This deferred consumption can mitigate the possibility of a
postwar depression.
 149: "It seems politically impossible for a capitalist democracy to
organize expenditure on the scale necessary to make the grand experiment
which would prove my case -- except in war conditions."
 150-1: The massive German war preparation shows how much unused
capacity a market economy has.


--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901