Keynes and the G20

Tony Aspromourgos and I debate ‘Should Keynes Have a Seat at the G20 Table’ in today’s AFR.  Text below the fold (may differ slightly from edited AFR version).

As if to help my case about the political imperatives driving fiscal stimulus, the AFR’s Smart Money section includes a feature called ‘The Great Australian Giveaway’:

Everybody loves a freebie, especially when money is tight and there are plenty of rebates, subsidies and handouts available from all levels of government, if you know where to look and what to ask for…

The free-for-all is not restricted to the working families beloved of politicians.

As Bastiat said, ‘government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.’

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posted on 28 March 2009 by skirchner in Economics, Fiscal Policy

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