How not to win an economic argument

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A cri­tique of a yet-to-be-pub­lished paper of mine (“Loan­able Funds, Endoge­nous Mon­ey and Aggre­gate Demand”, forth­com­ing in the Review of Key­ne­sian Eco­nom­ics lat­er this year; the link is to a par­tial blog post of that paper) by non-main­stream econ­o­mist Tom Pal­ley reminds me of one of my favourite ripostes by a politi­cian, back in the days before spin doc­tors stopped them say­ing any­thing offen­sive — or indeed any­thing inter­est­ing.

As Sir Robert Men­zies, for­mer Aus­tralian prime min­is­ter and leader of the con­ser­v­a­tive Lib­er­al Par­ty, was giv­ing a cam­paign speech in 1954, a heck­ler called out “Mr Men­zies, I would­n’t vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel”. Men­zies shot back: “Madam, if I were the Archangel Gabriel, you would not be in my con­stituen­cy.”

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About Steve Keen

I am Professor of Economics and Head of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University London, and a long time critic of conventional economic thought. As well as attacking mainstream thought in Debunking Economics, I am also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. The key issue I am tackling here is the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally, and our very low rate of inflation.