Tue November 15, 2011 Keynes' Consuming Ideas On Economic
Intervention On his deathbed the year after World War II ended,
John Maynard Keynes is said to have remarked that his only
regret in life was that he did not drink more Champagne. For
Keynes, consumption — economic or otherwise — was what made the
world go 'round. A long-dead British lord and economic theorist
seems an unlikely subject for a rap video, but this one, made
last year by George Mason University economist Russ Roberts and
filmmaker John Papola, has been a hit on YouTube: There's not
much that survives of Keynes' own spoken words, but he can be
heard in an old British newsreel, in which he delivered a stern
admonition. "We must free ourselves from the bondage of old
ideas," he said. One of the "old ideas" Keynes sought most to
debunk was the notion that economies in trouble would naturally
fix themselves, thanks to the magic of the marketplace.
Princeton economist Alan Blinder says Keynes put his finger on a
key economic problem — namely, th