Name That Statesman
June 24, 2009
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This is a game called "Name that Statesman." I have done my best here to describe the individual in detail without giving away the time or place where he worked (though it is a difficult task.) This should be an easy one for all historians here, so if you find it clever but already know the answer, please don't spoil it for the rest. (A rec and a nod will do =D) I hope it gets peope thinking - especially those who don't know the answer at first. If it's popular, I've got quite a few more of these are that are far more difficult. (And no Google searching the quotes either until you figure it out! That's cheating!)
Daivd in Qatar
He was widely viewed as a wise, if protectionist, central planner who recognized the failure of the free market and the need for nationally guided economic development. A famous mainstream economist of his time wrote that he "found a cure against unemployment before Keynes was finished explaining it.”
He instituted a New Deal, with differences only in the detail. GDP figures from the era reflect a growth path. Unemployment stayed low. He intervened in labor markets, but he never attempted to boost wages beyond their market level.
He embarked on huge public works programs like highway expansion, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, regulated the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national health care and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits. His party's progressive program was essential to limit the market economy. Such programs remain widely praised today. They are features of every “capitalist” democracy.
Keynes himself admired his economic program, writing in the Foreword to a foreign language edition to the General Theory:
"[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of [his country's political system], than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."
Keynes’s comment did not come out of the blue. His party's economists rejected laissez-faire, and admired Keynes, even foreshadowing him in many ways. Similarly, the Keynesians admired his party (see George Garvy, Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 2 [April 1975]: 391–405).
Even as late as 1962, in a report written for President Kennedy, Paul Samuelson had implicit praise for him:
"History reminds us that even in the worst days of the Great Depression there was never a shortage of experts to warn against all curative public actions. . . . Had this counsel prevailed here, as it did in [his party], the existence of our form of government could be at stake. No modern government will make that mistake again."
Name That Statesman
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