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What Is the Legitimate Role of Government?

In: Why Reaganomics and Keynesian Economics Failed

Author

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  • James E. Sawyer

    (Seattle University)

Abstract

Keynes pointed out in Chapter 12 of The General Theory that investments which are ‘fixed’ for the community are thus made ‘liquid’ for the individual. Transactors too often concentrate their efforts on liquidity, rather than productivity. ‘The actual, private object of the most skilled investment to-day,’ according to Keynes, ‘is “to beat the gun”… to outwit the crowd, and to pass the bad, or depreciating, half-crown to the other fellow.’ Such transfers of assets, according to Keynes, are ‘a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs — a pastime in which he is victor who says snap neither too soon nor too late, who passes the Old Maid to his neighbor before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops’.

Suggested Citation

  • James E. Sawyer, 1987. "What Is the Legitimate Role of Government?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Why Reaganomics and Keynesian Economics Failed, chapter 9, pages 125-140, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-09497-4_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-09497-4_9
    as

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