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Keynes Vs Hayek

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The ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek have dominated the economic landscape since the end of World War II. Both of these influential economists had distinct ideas about economic freedom--ideas that were very clearly in opposition to each other. Following World War II, one major economic question dealt with the appropriate role for government in the economy. That has often been portrayed more recently as a battle between two economic titans. Hayek, in the 1970s, came to be seen as opposing everything Keynes and the Keynesian consensus stood for. More recently, many see the change towards more free-market ideas since the 1980s as the victory of Hayek's ideas over Keynes'—a process that has since reversed as a result of the Great Recession. This academic battle of ideas has even made its way into popular media. These two great thinkers had more in common than …show more content…

Maybe the victory was Hayek’s; he won a Nobel prize, after all, and Keynes didn’t. But then again, Keynes won the ear of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who followed the economist’s advice to let the government print money and create jobs until the depressed U.S. economy revived. John Keynes is for spending our way into prosperity whereas Hayek is for letting things self adjust and for government to do nothing to revitalize the economy when it is in free fall like the US economy was in 2008. I will go with the Keynesian model that embraces government spending or stimulus. I strongly believe that the US economy will be worse off today if the stimulus was not enacted. The argument that government spending crowds out private investment and produce the unintended consequences of jobless and , deficit and low productivity is just not

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