When Keynes will work

Jeffrey Dorfman posts an insightful piece in Forbes.com that should encourage the Keynesians out there...even though it renders their cause obsolete. Keynes was right about the stimulative effects of deficit spending...assuming we existed in an alternate universe.

It might have had a positive effect when there was a budget surplus, but the last one was squandered away quickly,  12 years ago. The next one isn't coming any time soon. Dorfman writes:

When government spends money at best they can manage to perfectly anticipate what we want, thereby matching the benefit we would have gotten from our own spending, or they can do worse. Government cannot do better unless it knows what we want better than we know ourselves.

Sadly, the government does typically pose as an entity that can anticipate our every need. This ruse gives the politicians just enough cover to plunder the system.

Economic literacy is taking a horrible beating these days. It's not something government schools will teach, either. Educate your children. I just sent mine a copy of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. I urge all parents to do the same.