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beyond depreciation recovery, is simply less consumption with no growth to show
for it. My charts and tables show that this has been true wherever and whenever
tested, in eight economies over 40 to 140 years. We crowd our niches like other
creatures, I think, and have no room for growth except as innovation widens the
niche. The charts and tables seem to tell us that innovation costs no more in failure
rates and learning curves that daily coping does.
Macroeconomics and Keynes
Macro emerged in the 1930s under the influence of Keynes. Simon Kuznets, the chief
architect of the U.S. national accounts, was one of the five economists Keynes invited
to proof the chapters of his General Theory as he wrote them’. National accounts
were soon reorganized along Keynesian lines.
To read the General Theory, a beautiful work, one would think that counter opinions
were led by his close friend Arthur Pigou. But Pigou was already in print with
recommendations much like Keynes’ when it was published in 1936. Opposition
came rather from Mises, the other Austrians, Lionel Robbins and the Chicago school.
They argued that intervention tends to make things worse. So do many economists
today. Keynes believed in fiscal and monetary policy as I describe in Chapter 1. He
favored fiscal policy.
Chapter 2 said that he made a basic distinction between investment producing new
things and repurchase of things already produced. Only the first counted as real
investment. The difference matters because only the first puts plant and people to
work. Transfers neither add nor subtract value. Even so, my own language counts all
as investment, and ranks investment only by return. I make no distinction among
investment adding new plant and equipment, or investment in stocks and bonds
already issued, or in existing structures, or even under the mattress.
3 The others were Harrod, Sraffa, Joan Robinson and Ralph Hawtree.
Chapter 8 Banks, Money and Macroeconomics 2/8/16 14
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