Keynes was really a Conservatiive

Keynes Was Really A Conservative
Bruce Bartlett, 08.14.09, 12:00 AM EDT

Conservatives continue to decry the $787 billion stimulus package enacted in February. At best, they think it accomplished nothing because the additional federal borrowing took as much out of the economy as the stimulus put in. At worst, the deficits and enlargement of government will lead to slower growth and inflation not too far down the road.
Those on the right have been making this same argument ever since British economist John Maynard Keynes popularized the idea of using budget deficits to stimulate growth in his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. For this reason, Keynes, even more so than Karl Marx, is the principal bête noire of free market economists. They believe governments should never do anything to counteract economic downturns. Consequently, they must implicitly believe that all recessions are the result of massive and simultaneous failures by private businesses and workers who must therefore bear all the costs of adjustment. By opposing government intervention, free market economists are saying that it either made no mistakes or should do nothing to fix those it may have made.
What Keynes understood is that governments bear primary responsibility for recessions. In really severe downturns, such as we suffered in the 1930s and are suffering today, government action is essential to turn the economy around; the private sector simply can't do it on its own. He also understood that democratic societies cannot long tolerate high levels of unemployment. At some point, people will jettison capitalism for some sort of socialism, which would threaten democracy as well.

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