Writing a thousand word argumentative essay on this topic due on Tuesday, I need resources that are short, concise, and simple to base this around. I have been having an extremely difficult time finding stuff on this, even from this website.
Really? Well there are three good articles on it:
Standing Keynesian Consumption on its Head
Spotlight on Keynesian Economics
Keynes, the man
There are of course also Hazlitt’s, Hutt’s and Rothbard’s refutations of Keynesianism, all available on the mises.org site, but they’re much longer.
-Jon
Lol these are too long as it is 
Try searching the daily articles again. However, it’s going to be hard to find an expose of Keynesianism that’s both short and simple. Maybe one of the other members here knows of one.
-Jon
I need it more simplified though, as I am having a hard time understanding a lot of what these articles say.
There’s this, but I’m not sure if this counts as simpler. Hoppe doesn’t use as much jargon as Reisman or Rothbard do, and he refutes Keynes on Misesian grounds as opposed to Keynesian grounds (Rothbard and Reisman refute him within his own system), so maybe it’s more digestible.
-Jon
Thanks, I also need to have a non-internet source, which can easily be a book off of this site. Now to find it…
I’d consider the possibility that you’re having trouble because your topic doesn’t quite make sense. You’ve set up an opposition between two things that aren’t exactly opposed. Laissez-faire economics is normative economics - it’s a particular idea that some policies are right and wrong. Keynesian economics is positive economics - and certainly when it comes to Keynes, the term “value-free” makes perfect sense. In any case, Keynesian economics is a methodology of economic analysis, not policy suggestions.
I understand Laissez-Faire Economics to be Praxeology, which is Misesian teaching, which is the anitthesis to Keynesian Economics.
It could be a terminology issue, but I don’t think this is quite true either. Praxeology is the science of human action, of which economics is a part. It gives the methodology by which economics is studied. The subject matter studied by economics includes economics proper - that is, the laws of economics, and thymology, or economic history. Laissez-faire economics is the normative idea that the government should not intervene in the economy. Many laissez-faire economists are Misesians, but many aren’t, including some of the more notable and influential laissez-faire economists, such as Friedman and Hayek, although the latter was part of the broad Austrian school. Almost all Austrians are laissez-faire, but not all - Richard Ebeling speaks about a group of Austrians who think that Israel should have a socialist economy, because they believe that socialism is harmful to prosperity, and they happen to be anti-semites who wish for Israel not to be prosperous. In any event, Austrians don’t derive their laissez-faire views from Austrianism by itself, but also from external value judgments, such as that prosperity is desirable, and that it is desirable enough to outweigh other considerations, such as equality. It’s conceivable for someone to be an Austrian, but also to believe that equality is better than prosperity - that it really is better for misery to be spread evenly than for happiness to be spread unevenly, and so advocate for a controlled economy.
You want to have your cake. You want to eat it, too.
If you want to do it right, you have to read the material. You’ve got all day today and after school on Monday. Did this assignment just come in on Friday? If so, then either the teacher expected you to already know this material (perhaps because it was taught in class?), or he has unreasonable expectations. If it came in weeks ago, then you’ve dug yourself a hole by waiting. We can’t dig you out of it, the best we can do is throw you a rope. If climbing the rope looks like it will take too long, there’s nothing more we can do. Just start climbing and hope you make it.
Or, you can email me the assignment requirements, PayPal me $1000, and I’ll get it done for you by the end of the day today.
The assignment is a 1000 word argumentative essay for English class, topic is our choice. This is the bes topic I came up with that I could argue for that long on.
Then my suggestion would be to change it to laissez-faire versus interventionism. Also, if you only have 1000 words, you might need to narrow it down beyond that.
Narrow it down to what? Here is what I have so far, halfway through tke 1k mark.
"
Laissez-Faire Economics vs. Keynesian Economics
Laissez-Faire Economics, (aka Austrian Economics, Classical Economics) is old fashioned. Followers of that system lack the mathematical equations to be able to make sound decisions. Times have changed, thus making this economic philosophy archaic and useless. Inflation is good for the dollar, due to the fact that it expands the economy and increases production, and a national deficit is good for the country.
Or at least, that’s what the followers of John Maynard Keynes say. Actually, this belief system dates back centuries, to the medieval belief that the King was empowered by God, and that his decisions were infallible. The modern theory of this form of economist is that the government can do no evil, and that a large government is necessary for the establishment of a peaceful, prosperous society. Keynes, a British economist who believed that higher governmental control of the market would be beneficial to the country and advocated not only a national central bank, as we have in the Federal Reserve Bank, but a world bank, in order to establish a one-world currency.
In contrast, Classical economists believe that the less government intervention in the marketplace the better. They believe that human behavior is to volatile and easily changed to be turned into mathematical formulas, i.e. there is no way to determine whether Mr. X will chose product A over product B, or that he will chose product C over A and B. Because of this, you cannot control the economy, or determine future purchasing/consumption patterns.
Keynes economics would work quite well if you didn’t account for human actions, which would be effective if we were robots without the ability to think. However, this is not the case, and we cannot determine our beliefs based on this flawed method of thinking.
In The Present State of Austrian Economics, Murray Rothbard states (pages 2-3):
“The inflationary recession of the early 1970s was a shock for two reasons: (1) in the Keynesian model, recessions are supposed to be due to underspending, and inflation to overspending; how
then could both occur at the same time? And what can fiscal (or even monetary) policy
do about it? and (2) intervention and statist planning of fiscal policy and “growth
economics” in the 1960s was supposed to have eliminated business cycles forevermore,
to bring us, in the naive jargon of the economic Establishment of that day: full
employment without inflation.”
That is another major flaw in the Keynes viewpoint. How can inflation and recessions (or depressions) occur at the same time if they both represent the opposite ends of the spectrum(Overspending and under spending)?
Monetarists, a third economic perspective, started by the “Chicago boys,” headed by Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman, holds onto many of the beliefs that Laissez-Faire economists profess to with a few exceptions, one being his upholding of the Federal Reserve, even though he did see many problems in their policies, stating that (quote) “If I were to make up a balance sheet for the Federal Reserve, I could name many credit items on the research side, very few on the policy side.”
"
My thoughts would be, first, that you’ll need to do some proofreading and take care of run-on sentences. More substantially, though, I don’t see how you’ll deal with the topic in sufficient depth in only 500 more words. That’s why I recommended narrowing it down - free market vs. interventionism in money, in welfare, in wages, etc.
In any case, Austrian economics is not the same as classical economics. In fact, the birth of Austrian economics, with Menger’s Principles, was largely impelled by the failure of the classicalists to deal adequately with the diamond water paradox. While better than neoclassicalists, the classicalists were not all defenders of the free market. The “invisible hand” may well be insufficient to establish the defense of the free market.
On the other hand, Keynesian economics is not the same as neoclassical economics, and not all neoclassicals are Keynesian - thus, not only Keynesian believe in mathematical modelling. As pointed out yesterday, Keynes as economist was describing a method of analysis, and his policy recommendations are separate from his economics. I think it is painting with too broad a brush, and simply characturing, to say that Keynesian economics is the same thing as the divine right of kings.
From the Austrian viewpoint, why is it a flaw in Keynesian thinking that it failed to predict the 70’s? As Austrians, we don’t accept prediction as the point of economics.
I think it is very important to be careful and correct in criticizing our opponents, otherwise we only make ourselves look ridiculous and uneducated.
Lol I am ridiculous and uneducated on this subject, which is making it difficult. I’ll shift my point of view to what you said, see how that helps. That should actually make it easier for me to write, since non-interventionism in economics is more in my area of education.
Yes, I think you could make a stronger case, particularly in 1000 words, by talking about interventionism vs. non-interventionism rather than mixing in the methods of analysis. The analysis might still be relevant - if mathematical models don’t work, they are not a reason for intervention - but could be handled in a more cursory manner without harming the paper.
There are more fundamental points at stake though - aggression, property rights, and so on. Those are often more useful for a short persuasive essay, in my opinion.
Good luck, and let me know if I can help.
I think the analogy between keynesian interventionism and monarchy is perfect.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Well, I could at least provide you my signature to fit into your paper if you wish.