Guest Post: The Keynesian Legacy Unravels

Originally posted at Monty Pelerin's World, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana Ideology is powerful, capable of masking unpleasant facts. Whether we recognize it or not, we are all slaves to ideology. Economists are no different in that regard than other people. They hold preconceived ideas which affect the interpretation of data and facts. In the extreme, ideology is capable of blocking the recognition of contradictory information, effectively blinding a person to valuable evidence. Keynesian economists believe, regardless of logic and data, that economies can be managed from the top down. In their world, economies are little different than machines. Change some inputs here, speed them up over there, add some lubrication, etc. and the machine will respond in the fashion desired. Output can be “managed” to whatever level needed pure...