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NOTE Why did the "establishment" accept Keynesianism so readily?

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For the first time in the history of economic thought, there have been many differences among economists before that.

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This is the first time that economists, sort of official economists, professors and writers, etc., actually advocated inflation and deficit spending.

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Before that, economists almost unanimously advocated balanced budgets, sound money, the gold standard, and so forth.

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And so, in other words, here we have the Keynesians advocating what governments would love to do anyway,

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Because before that, economists were sort of like the Peck's bad boy or the doer pessimist in the group.

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The governments would try to advocate all sorts of wild boomboggles and fancy schemes.

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The economists would always say, no, it's not going to work.

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The economists are sort of the official wet blanket among intellectuals and statesmen.

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But here we have Keynesians who are not wet blankets.

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Blanket. They were very exuberant about the idea of government, inflation, deficit spending, and so forth, and so their ideas were adopted with great enthusiasm by the official political establishment.
