How do we fix the economy? Here are Keynes and Hayek (back from the dead), to explain it to us (hat tip to Dan Scott):
So who are these guys?
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946): Advocate of “Planned” economies. Keynes’ writing reinforced Karl Marx’s work Capital, and was wildly popular among academics in the US and worldwide from the 1920s until the economic downturn in the 1970s, and the final collapse of the (planned) Soviet economy in 1991.
Freidrich von Hayek (1899-1992): Free-market economist and 1974 Nobel Prize recipient. Hayek’s ideas in The Road to Serfdom echo Adam Smith’s free-market principles in The Wealth of Nations. Although Hayek’s ideas were ignored for much of the 20th century, were widely adopted after the failure of numerous planned economies. Today’s free-market economists see government interference in markets as the cause, rather than the solution, to economic “boom and bust” cycles. See Hayek’s Wikipedia bio.
More on Planned vs. Free Economies
Sample of PBS’s video series Commanding Heights:
The Frog Pot 