Why nobody listens to Keynesians

[Harry Veeder <aa361@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Bruce R. McFarling wrote:

> 	Let me draw your attention to Frank Ackerman's paper, "Perspectives
> on the Economics of Consumption," in the Sepetember 1997 Journal of
> Economic Issues.  Frank cites a study by Tibor Scitovsky, _The Joyless
> Economy_, 1976, from the Oxford University Press, in which Scitovsky
> points out the distinction that psychology draws between two different
> types of consumer Satisfaction: comfort and pleasure.  Nearly all desires
> for comfort are satiable -- and Hyman's paradigmatic example of food
> is a good example of this: the discomfort associated with hunger is
> satisfied by consuming food, and there is a limit on the amount of food
> of adequate quality that is required to alleviate this discomfort.  The
> exception is the comfort of belonging -- of social acceptance -- and if
> society is organised so that the discomfort of lack of social acceptance
> is alleviated by acquisition and display of positional status goods,
> then the demand for these positional goods need not be satiable, since
> an increased abundance of a positional status good simply increases the
> amount that must be displayed as a marker of a given position.

I feel Keynesian economic philosophly is inappropriate for those societies
and communities which do not make a strong positive link between social
comfort and the acquisition and display of positional status goods. Or to
put it another way,  Keynesian economic policy enjoys popular support
among those cultures where a significant fraction of social esteem is
dependent on the acquisition and display of positional goods. The current
unpopularity of Keynesianism is due, in part, to a general shift in social
values which make the pursuit, possession and therefore production of such
positional goods less necessary for an individual to feel "social comfort."


Harry Veeder