Interviews with Famous Economists

Interviews with famous economists

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_stanleyfischer.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/prof_keithjoseph.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_robertskidelsky.html

to different videoclips on economy

http://www.pbs.org/search/?q=economy

Den klassiska debatten inom nationalekonomin. Frågan om den statliga inblandningen, marknaden mot regeringen. Materialet från Wikipedia, Youtube och The Daily Beast

Vägen till träldom (The Road to Serfdom) är en bok från 1944 skriven av ekonomen Friedrich von Hayek. Boken är fortfarande ofta citerad på grund av sin skarpa kritik mot socialismen.

Den publicerades ursprungligen av Routledge press i mars 1944 i Storbritannien, och senare av Chicagos universitet i september 1944. I april 1945 publicerade Reader's Digest en något förkortad version av boken, en version som nådde ut till mer än 600 000 läsare. Boken är översatt till ungefär 20 språk, och är tillägnad "socialisterna i alla politiska partier". På svenska utkom den 1944 på förlaget P.A. Norstedt & Söner, översatt av M. Loya och C. Sterzel. År 1996 utkom den i en nyöversättning av Margareta Eklöf på Timbro.

Hayeks huvudargument är att socialismen och planekonomins metoder och mål är central planering, som måste minska varje individs ekonomiska frihet att sälja produkter och tjänster, och att bilda företag. Då det är varje persons önskemål att själv bestämma hur denne ska få handla och arbeta, kanske fundamentala mänskliga rättigheter, krävs stora statliga interventioner för att förtrycka handel och företagsbildning. Hayek analyserar olika myndigheters försök att driva sådan ekonomisk politik, och drar slutsatsen att de antingen faller i sina ekonomiska mål, eller leder till totalitarism. Hayek hävdar att länder som Sovjetunionen och Nazityskland redan vandrat "vägen till träldom", och att flera demokratiska länder vandrar samma väg.

Genom boken kritiserar Hayek den demokratiska staten, som han menar tenderar att bli "godtycklig". Vilket skulle innebära att staten genom ett majoritets stöd skulle kunna kränka vissa minoriteter. För att lösa detta problem och minska risken för att staten ska missbruka sin makt, menar Hayek att makten bör decentraliseras. Han anser därför att ett federalt system, mycket snarlikt det som förekommer i USA bör vara det optimala systemet. Som exempel till godtyckliga stater nämner Hayek bland annat Nazityskland.

Hayek diskuterar individualism, kollektivism och planekonomi. Boken undersöker förhållandet mellan personlig frihet och statlig auktoritet, och argumenterar för att om statlig kontroll över ekonomin accepteras, kommer detta oundvikligt att leda till ekonomiskt kaos.

Boken gick totalt emot den då rådande keynesianistiska modell som rådde i Sverige, och sågs som felaktig av bland andra den svenske ekonomen Gunnar Myrdal. Trots, eller på grund av, detta fick von Hayek och Myrdal dela på Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne 1974.

Keynes är främst känd för sina nationalekonomiska bidrag. Han argumenterade bland annat för en aktiv finans- och stabiliseringspolitik. Detta uppfattades på 1930-talet som en intellektuell motpol till den klassiska nationalekonomiska makroteorin. Keynesianismen divergerade i synnerhet till den så kallade österrikiska och neoösterrikiska skolan, företrädd av Friedrich August von Hayek med flera, och senare Milton Friedmans monetaristiska Chicagoskola, (jfr. nyliberalism). Med sin ekonomiska intervetionism var Keynes varken socialist eller klassiskt liberal, utan socialliberal, tillika medlem av Liberal Party.

The Core Debate: Markets vs Government

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/video/qt/mini_p01_02_a_300.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc&feature=fvwrel

Lyrics to the battle;

KEYNES:

Here we are. Peace out. Great Recession. Thanks to ME. As you see. We’re not in a depression. Recovery. Destiny. If you follow my lesson. More Keynes. Here I come. Line up for the procession.

HAYEK:

We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch. And still digging. Don’t you think it’s time for a switch from that hair of the dog. Friend the party is over, the long run is here, it’s time to get sober.

KEYNES:

Are you kidding? My cure works perfectly fine. Have a look. The recession ended in ’09. I deserve credit. Things would have been worse. All the estimates prove it. I’ll go chapter and verse.

HAYEK:

Econometricians, they’re ever too pious. Are they doing real science or confirming their bias? Their Keynesian models are tidy and neat. But that top down approach is a fatal conceit.

KEYNES:

We could have done better if we’d only spent more. Too bad that only happens when there’s a world war. You can carp all you want about stats and regression. Do you deny that world war cut short the Depression?

HAYEK:

Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy. The last time I checked wars only destroy. There was no multiplier. Consumption just shank as we used scarce resources for every new tank. Pretty perverse to call that prosperity. Ration meat. Ration butter. A life of austerity. When that war spending ended, your friends cried disaster. Yet the economy thrived and grew faster.

KEYNES:

You too only see what you want to see. The spending on war clearly goosed GDP. Unemployment was over, almost down to zero. That’s why I’M the master. That’s why I’M the hero.

HAYEK:

Creating employment is a straight forward craft when the nation’s at war and there’s a draft. If every worker were staffed in the army and fleet we’d have full employment and nothing to eat.

HAYEK:

Jobs are a means, not the end in themselves. People work to live better, to put food on the shelves. Real growth means production of what people demand. That’s entrepreneurship, not your central plan.

KEYNES:

My solution is simple and easy to handle. It’s spending that matters. Why’s that such a scandal. Money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices. Revitalizing the economy’s juices. It’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark. To bring it to life we need a quick spark. Spending the life blood that gets the flow going. Were it goes doesn’t matter. Just Get Spending Flowing.

HAYEK:

You see slack in some sectors as a general glut. But some sectors are health only some in a rut. So spending’s not free, that’s the heart of the matter. Too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car. There’s no engine to stall. No experts can fix it. There’s no “it” at all. The economy is us. Put away your wrenches, the economy is organic.

KEYNES:

So what would YOU do to help those unemployed? This is the question you seem to avoid. When we’re in a mess, would you have us just wait, doing nothing until markets equilibrate?

HAYEK:

I don’t wanna do nothing, there’s plenty to do. The question I ponder is who plans for whom. Do I plan for myself or I leave it to you. I want plans by the many, not by the few. Let’s not repeat what created our troubles. I want real growth not a series of bubbles. Stop bailing out losers, let prices work. If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk.

KEYNES:

Come on are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street gyrations challenge the world view of self regulation? Even you must admit that lesson we’ve learned is more oversight is needed or else we’ll get burned.

HAYEK:

Oversight? The government’s long been in bed with those Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve bled. Capitalism is about profit and loss. You bail out the losers there is no end to the cost. The lesson I’ve learned is how little we know. The world is complex, not some circular flow. The economy is not a class you master in college, to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge.

KEYNES:

You’ve been on your high horse and you are off to the the races. I look at the world on a case-by-case basis. When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves and do what I can to cure our disease. The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail. That’s why markets are so prone to fail. In a volatile world we need more discretion so state intervention can counter depression.

HAYEK:

People aren’t chess men you move on a board at your whim, their dreams and desires ignored. With political incentives, discretion’s a joke. Those dials are twisting – just mirrors and smoke. We need stable rules and real market prices so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis. Give us a chance so we can discover the most valuable ways to serve one another.

Keynes Trumps Hayek in Debate

Nov 9, 2011 4:45 AM EST

In the Asia Society debate, Keynes was a proxy for Obama’s economic policies and Hayek played the same role for GOP presidential candidates—with most of the audience siding with the Keynesians who think the government should do something about the economy.

It’s been billed as the Fight of the Century: John Maynard Keynes vs. Friedrich Hayek. And on Tuesday night at the Asia Society it became a high-powered Thomson Reuters debate, moderated by Sir Harry Evans and featuring Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps on the side of the Hayekians.

Nicholas Wapshott, who introduced the debate, gives a good overview of what’s at stake in an article for Reuters. It’s particularly germane right now, with Keynes acting as a proxy for Obama’s economic policies and Hayek serving the same role for essentially all of the Republican candidates.

Boiled down, it comes to this: Keynesians see a dreadful economy and say that the government should do something about it. Specifically, the government should get the economy moving again by spending money now. Hayekians, on the other hand, mistrust the idea that the government is the solution to any problem, and suspect that more government spending only acts to make matters worse. It’s a stance that makes for compelling political rhetoric: pay less in taxes, and see the economy grow! Nothing not to like there.

But could the Hayekians withstand the scrutiny of a formal debate? They had a hard time of it tonight.

For one thing, the Keynesians had the advantage of history. Keynes is a giant of 20th-century economic thought, who was intimately involved in policy decisions at the highest level and whose works are revered to this day. Hayek, by contrast, has always been a more marginal figure, whose works are borderline unreadable even in the original German, and who had an unhelpful habit of contradicting himself on a semiregular basis. Some of Hayek’s ideas—a nugget here, a concept there—have proved surprisingly resilient over time. But taken as a whole, it’s hard to point to a big-picture philosophy of practical economics in Hayek’s oeuvre as a whole. And as Sylvia Nasar pointed out, when Hayek did make specific statements and predictions about the economies he lived in, he was very quickly proved wrong.