.
Monetary
and Fiscal Counter-Depression Policy:
An Analysis Correcting
Keynes' Ignoring of Tax Burdens |
| [Reprinted from The
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol.18, No.4, July,
1959, pp.339-451] |
In the last two decades "liquidity preference" has been very
much a term to conjure with. But just what does it mean and what is its
significance for the understanding of economic phenomena?
The late Lord Keynes, widely regarded as the principal authority on the
subject, related it closely to hoarding. "The concept of Hoarding,"
he said,[1] "may be regarded as a first
approximation to the concept of Liquidily preference. Indeed, if
we were to substitute 'propensity to hoard' for 'hoarding,' it would
come to substantially the same thing." If this is so, "liquidity
preference" is really just a part of the theory of the velocity of
circulation of money and checking accounts. The greater "liquidity
preference" is -- i.e., the greater the "propensity to hoard'
-- the lower will be, other things equal, the velocity of circulation.
But since other things are often very unequal, the theory of liquidity
preference can be only a part of the theory of velocity. Perhaps,
indeed, liquidity preference is a small and relatively unimportant part
of this theory!
"Liquidity preference" has been presented with particular
emphasis on desire for liquidity in preference to a relatively low per
cent gain on investment. But there may likewise be a degree of
preference for liquidity as compared with the enjoyment of consumers'
goods or services. One may give up some pleasure today, not necessarily
because he prefers any ...
[note: the next page is missing from the copy of this paper available
to SCI for scanning]
...unemployment, is it primarily the maintenance of liquidity, as such,
that they have in mind? Might they not be willing to lay aside, instead,
milk, cheese, meat and other consumable goods, except that these
are perishable? Is not their motive chiefly one of spreading their
limited means over a longer time, rather than one of keeping "liquid?"
But in all of these cases, whether or not they involve "liquidity
preference," there will be a reduction in the velocity of
circulation of money.
II
AT THIS POINT we may pause to ask whether liquidity preference ever did
actually start a significant depression or "whether it was ever the
chief predisposing cause of such a depression. Perhaps, instead,
liquidity preference
and the decreased velocity of circulation resulting from it or
from the other causes suggested above, are always sequential to and a
result of bank credit restriction or other action or circumstance
tending to reduce the circulating medium. In any case, it does not seem
unreasonable to ask whether there is real evidence that liquidity
preference has ever been the -- or even a -- significant initiatory
force in bringing on a depression.
Keynes refers to the experience of Great Britain and the United States
after the first world war as "actual examples" showing that
accumulation of wealth can be great enough to reduce the marginal yield
of capital -- what a last increment or unit of capital can add to
production -- more rapidly than the rate of interest can fall[4]
in view of "prevailing institutional and psychological factors."
Here we must note that Keynes defines the rate of interest as "the
reward for parting with liquidity for a limited period." The
post-war events in these countries, he concludes, showed that "in
conditions mainly of laissez faire, such a fall in the marginal
yield of capital can interfere "with a reasonable level of
employment" and with the standard of life that "the technical
conditions of production" could otherwise provide.
But surely, so far as the United State was concerned, the sharply
restrictive policy of the Federal Reserve system in 1920-21, and again
in 1929 and after, must have been of dominating influence on the events
and conditions that followed.[5] How was it
possible for Keynes to attribute these depressions so confidently to
liquidity preference, in view of the known antecedent facts? Dr. Clark
Warburton's carefully worked out statistical data[6]
provide impressive evidence that it was bank policy -- and not an
initiatory spurt of liquidity preference -- that can most reasonably be
regarded as the principal effective and sufficient cause.
Cogent theory, too, points to the conclusion that a great and rapid
decrease of circulating medium must inevitably -- or almost inevitably
-- bring about dull business and unemployment. If the volume of
circulating medium declines, during a relatively short period, by (say)
a third, how can as many goods be purchased or as many workers
be hired?
There is, of course, no mathematical reason why depression and
unemployment must ensue just because the total volume of spending is
reduced by a third. These results would not manifest themselves if
prices, wages, rentals etc., would all decline in as great proportion --
and as quickly -- as the volume of spending. For even though
only two-thirds as much money is spent for commodities, just as many
commodities can be and will be purchased with this decreased money
provided the commodities sell for only two-thirds the previous prices.
And even though only two-thirds as much money is spent in the hiring of
labor, as many workers can be and will be hired and for as many hours,
provided wages are only two-thirds as high. And likewise with the
leasing of houses and of business property and other business
transactions.
But who will assert that such a decrease of money and resulting
decrease of demand for goods and for labor would be immediately
succeeded by acceptance of equally reduced prices, wages and rentals?
Who will assert that the necessary proportionate reduction in prices
(including retail prices as well as wholesale and raw material prices)
and of wages and rentals would come within a month or two? Would trade
union leaders quickly agree to a one-third reduction in wages? Would
real estate owners who have leased their property to business concerns
for a ten-year period or longer at agreed rentals, quickly agree to a
one-third cut in these rentals? Who, indeed, will declare with
confidence that such a reduction of prices and of rentals and wages
would come within several months -- or even a year?
But then it may be argued by some that even with a great reduction in
the number of dollars available to spend, there need be no
proportionate reduction in the number of dollars spent -- or no
reduction at all! Men will make up for the decrease, it may be said, by
spending money that they had been holding for emergencies. That is, the
velocity of circulation of money will be greater!
Yet to suppose that there is no reduction at all in the amount
of money and bank checking accounts spent is to suppose that a man will
spend as many dollars when he has few as when he has many! The truth
is, whatever may be the mathematical possibilities in the case, that
human beings spend less money when they have less money, and that to
reduce the amount of money and checking accounts in a country causes
less to be spent than if the amount of money had not been reduced. Hence
the demand for goods declines and prices tend downward.
Indeed, there is a reasonable probability that a decrease in the number
of dollars, before very long and at least for some time, will reduce the
number of dollars spent in even greater proportion. For the decrease of
demand for goods and the incipient fall of prices may give rise to
anticipation of further fall of prices. Thereby it may induce business
men to delay spending their money lest the goods they purchase with it
prove unsalable except at a loss; or may induce consumers to delay
spending in the hope of finding better bargains later. That is to say
velocity of circulation of money may not only fail to become
greater but may actually become less.
Under such circumstances, business can remain as active as before only
if prices fall even more rapidly than the decline in the number of
dollars.
If, however, commodity prices do fall in a sufficient ratio, this will
still not insure business activity if at the same time such business
expenses as rentals and wages remain comparatively rigid. Thus, if
commodity prices fall because of a decrease of money and bank credit,
and yet wages do not fall in anything like the same proportion, then the
goods produced by labor will not sell for enough to pay these rigidly
held wages. Demand for labor must and will decline, unemployment must
result and production be cut down.
If charges made by owners for the use of land and capital are rigid
despite falling commodity prices, there will be more land and capital
left unused. In consequence, labor will be less well equipped with the
means of production, will produce less, and must accept even lower wages
than otherwise if it is to be employed.
The truth probably is that central banking policy has more to do than
anything else with the alternation of prosperity and depression, and
that central banking policy affects business activity through affecting
the volume of circulating medium of which bank deposits subject to check
are, at any rate in the Eng1ish-spcaking countries, the major part.
Unduly sharp and persistent bank credit restriction can quickly turn
prosperity into depression. This of course does not mean that those who
control central banking policy deliberately seek -- or have ever sought
-- to bring about depression. It means rather that bank credit policy
may be, and sometimes is, inept, so that evil consequences ensue which
the determiners of policy did not intend or expect.
But all this is not to say that, in theory, liquidity preference, or a
change in liquidity preference, could have no possible effect on the
velocity of circulation of money and checking accounts and, therefore,
on other economic phenomena.
III
IN ORDER TO EXPLORE the liquidity preference problem theoretically, let
us assume, first, the case of a country having a gold standard. Citizens
are saving and investing. Capital is increasing in relation to labor and
to land. The marginal net gain (above repairs, depreciation and taxes on
the capital and/or its income) from additional units of capital grows
less. The net per cent marginal productivity (or "efficiency,"
if the Keynesian term is preferred) of capital declines. Conceivably it
declines to so low a point that an increasing proportion of citizens
would prefer
either to enjoy more in the form of consumers' goods or
to hold ("hoard") money or checking accounts out of
circulation for such uses in the future as may then appeal to them.[7]
The tendency or "propensity" to hoard, under such
circumstances would be (according to the statement of Keynes with which
this paper began) "liquidity preference." What would be the
probable consequences?
Such a situation would mean, in one of its aspects, less investment.
Less capital -- in such forms as barns, factories, fruit trees,
locomotives, trucks, tractors, machinery, steamships, etc. -- would be
produced. But unless we predicate depression, other things, for a time,
would be produced in greater quantity.[8] If
citizens wanted chiefly consumers' goods and services, it is these that
would be more largely produced. But if citizens wanted, most of all,
liquidity, and so hoarded money, gold for coinage would
be more largely produced. Or, if we are considering a single country and
one having no significant gold deposits, gold for coinage would be imported.
The hoarding of money, if considerable, would of course have a
tendency, other things being equal, to bring the general price level
down. But unless there were a rather rapid increase in liquidity
preference, average prices would decline but slowly. And circumstances
might be such that they would not decline at all. For the conditions in
the gold mining industry or in the trade balance with the rest of the
world, or both, might be such that, were it not for this
hoarding (because of liquidity preference), there would be a tendency
for the price level to increase a bit. But the hoarding, we may
suppose,. as the "marginal efficiency of capital" came closer
to the zero point, might be indulged in by more and more citizens. In
consequence, even though the general price level did not decline
absolutely, it might decline in relation to the cost of
producing gold or to the price level in other go1d-standard countries.
Other things equal, a fall of average prices in a gold standard and
gold producing country would encourage the mining of gold which could be
minted into coins that would buy more than previously. Also, a price
level decline in a country would encourage the peoples of other
countries to purchase goods in the country where prices were thus
falling. Or, if prices did not fall absolutely but did fall in
relation to prices in other gold-standard countries, where prices
were rising, the peoples of these other countries would tend to
buy more from the country where average prices were rising less or not
at all.
Gold would, therefore, be produced in and/or would flow into the
country and would be minted into coins. This increase in money could
mean, then, that the increasing desire to hoard would be fully satisfied
and yet the increased amount of money would sufficiently compensate for
its decreasing velocity of circulation, to prevent the price level from
falling. Any decreased employment in the constructing of new and
additional capital, due to liquidity preference) would be offset during
the transition period, by increased employment in the production
of gold or by increased employment in the production of goods to
be exported in payment for foreign gold, or by both of these. If so, "liquidity
preference, even though the "marginal efficiency of capital"
were to come fairly close to zero, need not decrease the price level, or
the effective demand for labor, or employment.
But equally satisfactory results would be obtainable, if monetary sense
were used, without the necessity of producing gold at home at great cost
in labor or of buying it in quantities abroad at high cost in terms of
exports and, therefore, of work. Predicating, of course, determination
to avoid any significant -- and objectionable -- price-level inflation,
additional money could be paid out by government, sufficient to offset
any liquidity preference which might otherwise bring the price level
down and precipitate depression. Or the government could pay out checks
on the Federal Reserve banks, which would be backed by a special issue
of government paper money eligible -- like gold certificates -- as
reserves for the Federal Reserve banks. Some of the purchases of goods
and services by government could thus be paid for with this new money --
or by checks on the Federal Reserve banks -- instead of with money
secured through government taxing us or borrowing from us.
In other words, instead of performing labor to produce gold or to
produce extra goods with which to purchase gold from abroad, some of us
would be performing important services for our own government. For the
performing of these services we would receive additional circulating
medium. The desire for liquidity would thus be satisfied, but without
any diverting of labor into the production of gold or into production of
goods to be shipped abroad in payment for gold. Or the new circulating
medium might be paid out in redemption of a part of the national debt.
Obviously, if only a small increase of circulating medium were needed
for the purpose, Federal Reserve action alone would suffice. But we are
considering here the question whether even a great increase of demand
for liquidity, due to (say) a considerable lowering of the "marginal
efficiency of capital," must necessarily lead to business
depression in a private enterprise system.
For the contention seems to be that,[9] even in
the absence of any business or price level fluctuation from unwise
monetary -- including banking -- policy, the returns on capital might
possibly become so low, conceivably less than enough to cover
depreciation, that many recipients of money would hold it indefinitely
rather than invest in productive capital. If no gain at all
could be realized from investment in buildings, machinery, steamships,
etc., and especially if there were an average loss, one who
wished to provide for the education of his children or for his own old
age, would do as well or better just to lay his savings aside in the
form of money (assuming, of course, no inflation) until such time as he
might need them.
But such a condition, with wise control of the volume of
circulating medium, would not tend to bring business depression. If so
much money were hoarded as really to threaten significant
reduction in the demand for goods and in the general level of prices, a
wise monetary policy would provide for the issue of enough additional
money (and/or bank credit) to maintain the price level. This would mean
that the demand for goods in general at this level would not
decline, for such decline would bring the price level down. A
sufficiency of money to maintain the price level would, by that very
fact, be a sufficiency of money to maintain the demand for goods in
general. Hoarders laying aside money for future use could be permitted
to do so freely, yet there need be no disrupting decrease in the demand
for goods and labor. Obviously, though the uncomprehending may deny
this, there will be some limit to the amount of money wanted for
hoarding. For each hoarder would naturally apportion his
available money (or money and bank deposits subject to check) between
his current needs and his anticipated future needs and neither would nor
could hoard all of it.
Capital is productive but its marginal productivity -- what one final
increment or unit of capital can add to output -- decreases as the
amount of capital in relation to labor and land increases, And thus it
could conceivably happen, as just assumed, that a widespread and
continuing spirit of thrift would so increase the amount of capital as
to bring its marginal net productivity rate and, therefore, the rate of
interest, dose to the zero point or even below zero. However, as the
marginal productivity of capital approached zero, an increasing number
of persons would begin to show a preference for keeping their savings in
the form of money -- or of gold, platinum, silver, diamonds or other
valuable and easily stored commodities not subject to appreciable
physical depreciation. And so there is some reason to doubt that the
average net marginal productivity of capital would ever go below zero
or, even, quite to zero, no matter how widespread the spirit and habit
of thrift might become.
But it may be said by some objector that we cannot trust our government
thus to issue new money lest it issue this in excess.
The fact is, however, that to avoid the evils of periodic severe
depressions and to maintain a reasonably stable level of prices, we must
have, somewhere, effective control of the volume of circulating
medium.[10] If we cannot hope to trust our government or to have, ever,
a government that can be trusted to do this (and, therefore, a public
opinion that will consistently allow such a policy), there may be
considerable reason for despairing of the future of the system of free
private enterprise.
It perhaps should be emphasized that the policy here suggested is
certainly not one involving price regulation or socialistic
regimentation. It does not involve government operation of any industry.
In essence it is analogous to, if not practically identical with, the
establishment of a standard pound, a standard quart, a standard yard.
Since the dollar is a standard of value applicable to all goods and
services that are subject to purchase and sale, the stability reasonably
required is stability in terms of goods in general rather than in terms
of any specific commodity, whether gold, platinum or silver.
Varying conditions affecting the production of specific goods may cause
one commodity to rise in price at the same time that another falls. If
we maintain free private enterprise and free markets, the dollar cannot
be stable in terms of each and every specific article or service. But it
can be kept stable, or approximately stable -- if there is the will
to keep it so -- in terms of its average purchasing power, i.e., in
terms of the purchasing power of $100 or of $10,000 or of $100,000, over
a typical composite of goods. And just as it is conducive to the smooth
and efficient operation of a private-enterprise free market system that
the yard should be of calculable length rather than varying
unpredictably between twenty inches and fifty inches, so likewise does
it conduce to the smooth and efficient operation of private enterprise,
that the dollar should be of calculable and stable value.
IV
IF NEVERTHELESS some readers are
shocked at the idea of taking care of any liquidity preference
that might conceivably tend toward depression, by increasing the money
supply, they may be comforted by two considerations. The first is that
returns from capital do not now seem to be so low as to indicate any
probable threat from liquidity preference, as such, in the immediate
future. And the second is that there is available a very simple policy
completely ignored by Keynes, by which, even if otherwise the "marginal
efficiency of capital" to the owners of it could drop to near zero
in (say) a generation or so, we might enjoy at least a reprieve
for several years beyond that, maybe for a second or third generation or
longer!
Before identifying this policy, it will be advantageous for us to note
that "the marginal efficiency of capital" for the entire
community or for the nation as a whole, is, under existing conditions,
decidedly greater than for an individual owner or all private owners. A
capital instrument may yield -- its productivity may be -- 8 per cent a
year over the amount necessary to cover depreciation. But the owner --
or the lender -- cannot keep this for himself. The community, state
and/or nation will require a large proportion of it in taxation.
If taxation takes 3 per cent of the 8 per cent, the owner can have but
5 per cent. Let us suppose that investment in capital were actually so
much increased in two or three decades as to bring the average yield of
capital to its individual owners down to only 1 per cent. This would
mean that the capital was still really yielding 4 per cent but that
taxation was taking three fourths of that. On the supposition that
investment would go on only to the point of a 1 per cent return for the
investor, we would say that at that point the influence of "liquidity
preference" was sufficient to prevent any further investment. The
total yield may be high enough to encourage investment, perhaps for many
more years or even generations, but the yield after taxes is not. Or if
investment would go on only to the 2-1/2 per cent point for the
investor,[11] the existence of the 3 per cent
tax would make it stop at a total per cent yield of 5-1/2 per cent.
If, however, the tax -- or taxes -- were repealed and the revenue lost
were made up by a much higher tax on the annual rental value of land,
the entire per cent yield from capital -- whether 4 per cent or 5-1/2
per cent or whatever -- would thereafter go to the individual investor
in capital. This decidedly larger per cent yield might well be a
sufficient inducement to him to forget his desire for liquidity and
continue to invest. And if so, it might still be a considerable time --
whether a decade or two, or an entire generation, or far longer --
before the per cent yield got to the point where increase of circulating
medium was needed for the purpose of offsetting the tendency to prefer "liquidity"
to investment. Maybe that point would never be reached at all!
So far as I am aware, however, no Keynesian has ever shown, in
his writing, the slightest favorable interest in taking taxes
off man-made capital instruments and levying, instead, heavier taxes on
the value of land.
Even if, in the end, it were to turn out that we must still reckon with
the threat of depression from liquidity preference, it would
nevertheless be an advantage to have the large amount of capital that
this tax reform would bring to the communities adopting it. As long,
indeed, as the total "marginal efficiency of capital"
(including the part now going to government at various levels) is above
zero, i.e., as long as an additional increment of capital will
produce an excess over its cost of production, it is certainly an
advantage to have it. Labor is better equipped with buildings,
machinery, etc., and output per worker is larger. If, too, because of a
higher land value tax, less land is held speculatively out of use, so
that labor is also better supplied with good land, output per worker
will be further increased. If, as Keynes seems to have believed,[12]
at 2 or 2-1/2 per cent above zero return additional investment is likely
to be brought to a halt by liquidity preference, then it has to be true
that tax relief for capital at that point or sooner, would be favorable
to prosperity. And cogent theory as well as significant statistical data[13]
indicate that to make up the revenue lost, largely or entirely by a
heavier land value tax would give a further fillip to prosperity.
V
THOUGH KEYNES BETRAYS no interest in increased taxation of
community-produced land values, he does contemplate with equanimity and
seeming approval
[14] "the euthanasia of the cumulative
oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of
capital." This would come about, he suggests, via a State policy
aimed at increasing the volume of capital "until it ceases to be
scarce, so that the functional investor will no longer receive a bonus."
At least Keynes does not assert that, if no return at all from capital
is allowed to the individual saver and investor, the community or nation
will get, through private saving and investment, anything like as much
new capital as in the past. He does not assert, even, that capital which
is depreciated or obsolescent will be or would be replaced through such
individual saving and investment. It would seem, then, that there could
be appropriately applied to the Keynesian philosophy, the following
criticism which, for years, I have been applying to Marxism.[15]
Isn't it fairly probable that a social philosophy which repudiates
private enjoyment of any income from capital, must envisage
having the State take over the function of constructing capital? And
that it must envisage having the State determine how much is to be saved
and compel the saving? At any rate, socialists certainly do not put
their trust in any individual saving and capital construction but always
contemplate control of saving and of capital construction, by the State.
This means, practically, that the State must own all capital and see
that it is kept in repair. It means, also, obviously, that the State
must direct the use of capital. As a result, the nation which accepts
socialistic ideals inevitably accepts State control of industry. Even if
such control were not inevitable in theory, all of us know that it would
certainly be insisted on. The State becomes the universal employer
outside of the control of which no economic life is possible.
It is well for us to understand why a government based on a socialistic
ideology must be dictatorial in its relations with its citizens. Surely,
in regard to saving and the construction of capital, there can be no
alternative; and socialists do not contemplate any alternative. Since
individuals cannot be -- and certainly are not -- counted on to save
adequately when they are not permitted to enjoy individually the fruits
of saving, they must be compelled to save.
Such compulsory saving does not necessarily mean that citizens will be
consciously aware of the compulsion. The government does not say to the
individual: "You must save (say) twenty-five per cent of what you
receive as wages." It merely sees to it that the citizen receives
less money to spend. It publicizes a "five year plan,"
devoting, perhaps, a fifth or a third of the nation's annually available
labor to the construction of capital.
Obviously, the labor that is devoted to the construction of capital for
the use of future years cannot possibly be devoted to making shoes and
shirts, to raising potatoes, cabbages and wheat, to picking apples and
cherries and to baking bread. The more the labor of the people is
devoted to constructing capital for the service of the future, the less
labor can be devoted to the service of the present and the less the
people can have to enjoy this year and next.
But in a socialistic State, the individual has no choice in the matter.
Government decides for him and allows him, as wages, only what its
central planning committee sees fit to allow. If this is not compulsion,
what does the word mean? And are we perfectly certain that a nation can
be organized for compulsion in this respect, with the government owning,
operating, and increasing or decreasing at its pleasure, all productive
capital, yet maintain in its individuals spontaneity, initiative, and a
spirit of free inquiry and uninhibited criticism?
The clear logic of the matter, therefore, indicates not only that to
relieve capital from taxation, so far as we can, by drawing heavily on
the annual rental value of land, tends definitely to the strengthening
of the free private enterprise system. The same logic indicates that to
follow the opposite policy, i.e., to abolish the tax on land and take by
taxation practically all the yield of capital, must lead to the
management of all or practically all industry by the State, with saving
thereafter compulsory.[16] The community or
State which follows the first of these two divergent tax systems will
have, because of it, less good land held out of use and more productive
capital. Thereby its workers will be able to produce more and to earn
more. Thus, although few of them, if any, are aware of the fact, a land
value tax, within the limits of what it can yield, is more
advantageous to workers than the most sharply graduated income tax. And
this is true even for those workers whose exemptions are
sufficient so that they pay no income tax at all.
Keynesism is, obviously, closely related to -- though not absolute]y
identical with -- the economic philosophy of the Communist-dominated
States, in its explanation of business depression and, to a degree, in
other ways. The view of Rodbertus, Mummery and Hobson, accepted by Lenin
and his followers,[17] that business depression
results from inequality -- that the workers, exploited by their
capitalist employers, do not receive enough to buy what they have
produced[18] -- appears in Keynes with liquidity
preference overtones. What the low-income groups lack the means to buy,
the higher-income groups could buy -- and here we include "investing"
in buying -- and sometimes, for a decade or more, do buy. But when
capital becomes plentiful and its "marginal efficiency"
becomes relatively low, their buying (especially in the form of investing)
is, in the Keynesian view, so greatly reduced by liquidity preference,
as to bring about vast unemployment of the workers and even loss for
themselves.
Like the Communist-Socialist leaders who have followed the
Marxist-Leninist philosophy, Keynesians feel that the evil is
fundamental to a free private enterprise system. Like these, they think
of it as inherent in the general nature of the system and not to be
explained by anything so "superficial" as monetary
instability. Like these, they seem to believe that periodic breakdowns
are "inevitable" unless and until there is substantially
increased collectivism. And like these, they appear to have no interest
in distinguishing between private income from capital brought into
existence through individual saving and investment, and, on the other
hand, income from being in a strategic position to charge others for
permission to work on, to live on, and to draw subsoil deposits
from, those parts of the earth which have become desirable because of
geological forces and community development. Or, if they do have any
such interest at all, they seem to be -- at any rate Keynes seemed to be
-- more critical of private enjoyment of income from capital
than of private enjoyment of the rent of land!
Could it be that the interest and support -- often the enthusiastic
support -- of "the Keynesian revolution" in economics is to be
explained (1) by its having avoided any admission that land-value
taxation is in any way desirable, and (2) by its having coincided with a
substantial, and worldwide, trend towards collectivism?
FOOTNOTES
1. The General Theory of
Employment, Interest and Money, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co.,
1936, p.174.
2.
3.
4. Op. cit., p.219, for "definition of the rate of
interest," p.167.
5. Basic Principles of Economics, op. cit., Vol.II, pp.160-3
(in chapter entitled "Two Decades of Decadence in Economic
Theorizing").
6. See "Hansen and Fellner on Full Employment Policies" in
American Economic Review, 38 (March, 1948); "Monetary
Velocity and Monetary Policy" in Review of Economics and
Statistics, 30 (November, 1948), especially p.309; "Bank
Reserves and Business Fluctuations" in the Journal of the
American Statistical Association 3 (December, 1948).
7. Bohm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, English
translation, London, Macmillan, 1891, Book V., Ch.II, especially pp.
250-1.
8. Unless and until the shortage of capital instruments becomes serious
enough to prevent this.
9. See my Basic Principles of Economics, op. cit., Vol.II, pp.
176-7.
10. Ibid., Vol.II, p.32.
11. Keynes, op. cit., pp.218-9.
12. Ibid.
13. Basic Principles of Economics, op. cit., Vol.II,
129-36 (Ch.XI).
14. Keynes, op. cit., p.376.
15. The next six paragraphs are taken from my book, Basic
Principles of Economics, op. cit., Vol.I, pp.317-318. The
first edition, containing these paragraphs, was published in 1942. They
are reprinted in the 2nd edition (1947) and the 3rd edition (1955).
16. "Academic Freedom and the Defense of Capitalism," Am.
J. Econ. Sociol., 15 (January, 1956), p.179.
17. Robert L. Heilbroner says the view was "embroidered into the
royal cloak of Marxist doctrine" by Lenin. See The Worldly
Philosophers, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1953, pp. 186-91.
18. See, for an analysis and criticism of this theory, my Basic
Principles of Economics, op. cit., Vol.I, pp. 124-30; and
for an analysis and further criticism of various "modern"
modifications or overtones of it, see Vol.II, pp.155-82, including
footnotes.
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