On 5/11/08, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Carrol Cox wrote: > > The "long run" in reference to employment and unemployment seems utterly > > irrelevant to lived exeperience. Men and women are either employed or > > not employed NOW -- and the relevant future is rather limited: more than > > two or three years and their past life has been destroyed, and nothing > > that happens can recover that past life. > > The "long run" has more than one interpretation. To the orthodox > school of economics, it refers to a situation where all prices > (including wages) have adjusted completely to surpluses and shortages. > So in 1933 or so, these folks said "if we just let nature take its > course, the unemployment situation will get better." To which > Keynesians replied (citing something Keynes said earlier, I believe), > "in the long run, we're all dead." They were right. It turned out that > getting to the "long run" required a gigantic nudge from WW2 arms > spending. >
"this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set for themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
