Re: The long and short of it

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>I have to second Paul Phillips on this. If the short-run and the long-run
>are treated as analytically distinct--so that short-run fluctuations are
>determined by completely different factors to long-run growth, and one
>is super-imposed on the latter--then I think we lose a great deal. This
>leads to the deduction that, for example, the Great Depression didn't
>matter--it was just a cyclical thing and (some time) after it we got
>back to the average again.
>Cheers,
>Steve Keen
>

	This is surely true. But of course I did not say that we
should ignore the short run, or its contribution to the long run. I
said we should not sacrifice the long run for the short, and we should
evaluate stabilization policies in light of the contribution to
sustainable, egalitarian growth in living standards. The fact is that
Keynesian type theories do not have the tools to conceptualize and
solve problems of this sort.

Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx