Jonas on Keynes

George Jonas views the political interest in economics with his usual keen perspective:

"A Marxist-trained scholar I knew encountered Keynes for the first time when he came to Canada in the mid-1950s. He knew of the British economist, of course, just as he knew of the Austrian school of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, but he never studied them. For Marxists, they were anathema. He remained unimpressed by von Mises and Hayek, but Keynes transported him in ecstasy. "Imagine the elegant simplicity," he told me. "Lord Keynes discovered that if we deny ourselves things we live poorly, and if we deny ourselves nothing, we live well."

"Are you sure that's all there is to it?" I asked.

"Yes, yes."

Really? How exactly does that work out?

Find out by reading the whole thing.