Keynes v Hayek

Speaker(s): Professor George Selgin, Professor Lord Skidelsky, Duncan Weldon, Dr Jamie Whyte
Chair: Paul Mason

Recorded on 26 July 2011.

How do we get out of the financial mess we're in? Two of the great economic thinkers of the 20th century had sharply contrasting views: John Maynard Keynes believed that governments could create sustainable employment and growth. His contemporary and rival Friedrich Hayek believed that investments have to be based on real savings rather than fiscal stimulus or artificially low interest rates. BBC Radio 4 will be recording a debate between modern day followers of Keynes and Hayek.

George Selgin is Professor of Economics at The Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. Selgin is one of the founders of the Modern Free Banking School, which draws its inspiration from the writings of Hayek on the denationalization of money and choice in currency. He has written extensively on free banking, the private supply of money and deflation. George Selgin is the author of The Theory of Free Banking: Money Supply under Competitive Note Issue (1988), Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (1997), and Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage (2008).

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. He is the author of The World After Communism (1995) (American edition called The Road from Serfdom). He was made a life peer in 1991, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. His latest book is Keynes: The Return of the Master.

Duncan Weldon is a former Bank of England economist and currently works as an economics adviser to an international trade union federation. He has a long standing interest in and admiration for Keynes but also a respect for Hayek. He blogs at Duncan's Economic Blog.

Jamie Whyte was born in New Zealand and educated at the University of Auckland and then the University of Cambridge in England, where he gained a Ph.D. in philosophy. Jamie remained at Cambridge for a further three years, as a fellow of Corpus Christi College and a lecturer in the Philosophy Faculty. During this time he published a number of academic articles on the nature of truth, belief and desire, and won the Analysis Essay Competition for the best article by a philosopher under the age of 30. Jamie then joined Oliver Wyman & Company, a London-based strategy consulting firm specialising in the financial services industry, for which he still works, as the Head of Research and Publications. Jamie has published two books: Crimes Against Logic (McGraw Hill, Chicago, 2004) and A Load of Blair (Corvo, London, 2005). Jamie is a regular contributor of opinion articles to The Times (of London), the Financial Times and Standpoint magazine. In 2006 he won the Bastiat Prize for journalism.He is on the advisory board of The Cobden Centre.

The debate will be chaired by Paul Mason, economics editor of BBC 2's Newsnight and author of Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed.

• Category

  Education

[d4n4nable]

How on earth is coercively extracting someone's money against his will not stealing?

[JeffersonianTV]

"Government has to spend to" "***" government cannot spend unless it steals from the taxpayers. Why is no one jumping on this

[GordonGekko09]

Is the moderator directing traffic the entire time?

[Alex Niu]

Because people understand nuance.



[sedwarg]

which is relevant because ...

[MRsmellycat76]

I don't live in america.

[LET hetero]

you don't want to pay taxes? theres a whole with no government : its called antartica

[sedwarg]

As far as I'm aware practically no party wants to scrap the welfare state - so unless you vote for the BNP, yes you have.

[MRsmellycat76]

No they haven't I happen to live in a welfare state and to be honest this is the worst system ever used in the country and I never voted for the socialists.

[Aria Elf]

If you believe having no government will make everything perfect and opportunity flourish, just travel back in time to the wild west or caveman days. History shows with no government, the strong abused the weak and people lived in fear of their lives. Women were property, and the mind of a person meant nothing, all that mattered is how well you could shoot or club someone. No thanks. I can't waste anymore time on this absurd discussion - I'm glad the world isn't run by crazy extremists like you.

[Aria Elf]

It doesn't take research to see that what you have no understanding of how the world actually works. You can't say you're all for the roads and hospitals and schools but want to destroy the government. The government is not some monster that lives under your bed, "the government" is your next door neighbor who teaches elementary school, your friend who is a doctor at the veterans hospital, the guy you met who is a fireman or police officer. "The government" is other human beings helping you.