Nicholas Wapshott wrote a good article in Reuters about the on-going intellectual boxing match between two long-dead economists – in the liberal blue corner, John Maynard Keynes, and in the conservative red corner, Frederich Hayek. Wapshott is excited that a bunch of academics are going debate these worn economic theories because they still influence American politics and public policy. This will be like watching two geezers, seated in wheel chairs, duke it out in a nursing home .
The years have not been kind to either one of these economic ideologies. The Keynesian welfare states in the U.S. and Europe are going broke and the Hayek-esque de-regulated “free markets” have crashed from greed and corruption. Both ideologies are so exhausted that they’ve been reduced to deadening slogans: fiscal stimulus with borrowed money on the Left, tax cuts for millionaires on the Right.
They say generals are always preparing to fight the last war. Likewise, it seems economists are always quibbling about how to fix the last economy.
Perhaps new thinking is needed, beyond the tired and codependent Left and Right.
politicoblues 
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