Public ideas
Keynes – the world’s public servant
Maybe when Rudyard Kipling wrote “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …” he had John Maynard Keynes in mind.
Among economists Keynes is best known for his general theory of income, output and employment, which has underpinned government macroeconomic policy for the last 90 years, although many on the right claim to distance themselves from his liberal ideas.
He is also known, more widely, for his influence on shaping the world economic order that emerged from the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, the last aspects of which Trump is in the process of dismantling.
On the ABC’s Big Ideas – What can we learn from the life of John Maynard Keynes? – is a recorded discussion at the City University of New York between Paul Krugman and Zachary Carter, author of the 2020 book The price of peace: money, democracy and the life of John Maynard Keynes.
The discussion is part biographical, covering the developments that shaped Keynes’ ideas – the inevitable failure of the Treaty of Versailles, the re-armament of Germany, the 1930s depression, and the wars of 1937 to 1945. Much of that story is about the consequences when national governments take a zero-sum attitude to trade and other commercial relations –“your gain is my loss”. The discussion is also about how Keynes managed to get policymakers, and the wider public, to accept his ideas.
Can populism deliver?
Trump’s ability to mobilize MAGA crowds, enchanted by his simple solutions to complex problems, have led us to equate populism with the rise of right-wing authoritarians, whose policies amount to a betrayal of their supporters.
But is there such a thing as “good populism”?
Geraldine Doogue and Hamish MacDonald address that question on a Global Roaming session – Can populism deliver? – in an interview with Larry Diamond of Stanford University, author of Ill winds: saving democracy from Russian rage, Chinese ambition, and American complacency.
Diamond, essentially repeating his arguments from a 2017 lecture, suggests that populism can lead to good outcomes when it is directed against elites whose interests are out of line with the majority of the people, and it is directed at calling out and reforming established institutions that are perpetuating injustice. He warns, however, that governments swept into office by the politics of frustration and resentment can become anti-pluralist, illiberal and nativist.