Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

Go to http://econstories.tv for EconStories content and materials.

Produced by Emergent Order. Visit us at http://emergentorder.com.

"Fight of the Century" is the new economics hip-hop music video by John Papola and Russ Roberts at http://EconStories.tv.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession ended almost two years ago, in the summer of 2009. Yet we're all uneasy. Job growth has been disappointing. The recovery seems fragile. Where should we head from here? Is that question even meaningful? Can the government steer the economy or have past attempts helped create the mess we're still in?

In "Fight of the Century", Keynes and Hayek weigh in on these central questions. Do we need more government spending or less? What's the evidence that government spending promotes prosperity in troubled times? Can war or natural disasters paradoxically be good for an economy in a slump? Should more spending come from the top down or from the bottom up? What are the ultimate sources of prosperity?

Keynes and Hayek never agreed on the answers to these questions and they still don't. Let's listen to the greats. See Keynes and Hayek throwing down in "Fight of the Century"!

Starring Billy and Adam from http://www.billyandadam.com

Visit http://www.econstories.tv for the full lyrics.

• Category

  News & Politics

[falchard]

That is a good point. You could always argue in Keynesian Economics, all those things blown to smithereens are a broken window and creates demand. They should have had explosive growth after the war because of all the necessary rebuilding. After the wars, a large majority of the US population was unemployed. Eisenhower and Coolidge were wise enough to cut spending and live with a year or misery rather than try to create demand.

[VindictusXIII]

Go visit your comrades on the NY times op ed channel. I'm sure you can recruit Krugman to set the story straight. Let him know that Bob Murphy is still waiting to debate him - 100K+ charity donations on the line.

[Jyagos1]

I interpreted communism differently as an end goal.  But hey, there's as many different styles of Socialism as there are people. I just refuse to believe that one style fits all given how complex Marx truly was in regards to acknowledging different schools of thought and expanding capitalism past the models of Smith or even Ricardo and no one wants to acknowledge it.

It's as if he's a systems engineer while everyone else is an IT tech. They work with computers but at different levels of skill.

[Bryn Walsh]

Ugh, you know what? Screw this biased-as-hell channel. When it brings in a non-Austrian professor to write Keynes' verses I'll resubscribe.

[Bryn Walsh]

There are more than 2 classes of people in the Marxist model of society, and they are not particularly distinct.

That fact alone should be sufficient to demonstrate that you know shit-all about Marxism.

[Bryn Walsh]

Marx's ideas have had a profound impact on world politics and intellectual thought. His work gave birth to modern sociology, has had a lasting legacy in economics, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature, the arts, and almost all academic disciplines. Such influence is postulated to be a result of his work's "morally empowering language of critique" against the dominant capitalist society... Löwith considered Marx and Kierkegaard to be the two greatest Hegelian philosophical successors.

[Bryn Walsh]

The intellectually honest do not:

1. Declare things as "not up for debate"

2. Label anyone a "Barbarian" or "Neanderthal".

3. Accuse anyone of being a "lapdog" based off one comment.

You must be a teenager or something. If not, I seriously worry about the quality of your degree. In fact, get back to me when you know what any of this passage from his wikipedia page even means, because I bet £1 you don't have a clue.

[Bryn Walsh]

You only need to spend about 3 weeks on any University-level social science course to see the influence he had. I'm doing PolSci, Econ, Phil, Social Anthropology, and Sociology, and he's prominent in *all* of them.

Essentially he figured out that capitalism isn't teleological and IS culture. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. Some things many people even now struggle to grasp.

Also, communism was a prediction, not a diktat. Blame the hubris of the modern era for thinking it was the end of humanity.

[Bryn Walsh]

And unlike the rest of the world you were not bombed to smithereens.