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John Maynard Keynes was nominated as a good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (April 17, 2006, reviewed version). There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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Economic thought section is unbalanced

The economic thought section of this article is highly critical of the supposed main tenets of Keynes' philosophy. It is constantly saying that his ideas are contradicted by this or that. I don't think it gives a fair airing to Mr. Keynes' acual views. 71.230.57.94 (talk) 05:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes 57.94 , I completely agree. If no one else steps up, then as soon as I have time im going to re write the article in an effort to elevate it to featured article status, and I’ll try to ensure the economic thought section more accurately reflects Keynes ideas. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I was surprised when I encountered this article, since, in general, it was my understanding that, whether or not everyone is *politically* happy with the philosophy, in terms of economic policy, Keynes' ideas are very deeply accepted by economists and by policy makers. I was surprised to find that there was supposed to be such opposition. So I checked with a close friend who is a Director of one of the Federal Reserve banks, who told me that Keynes is widely and generally accepted in the policy community and that no one disputes the basic tenets. The arguments are all about the politics of where money gets pumped into economies: who benefits, which sectors are supported. Furthermore, outside our little United States, I doubt there's even any political grumbling. Therefore, the article presents an inaccurate and misleading picture of how these ideas are treated by our political and academic leaders and may simply reflect the wishful thinking of political bias. NaySay (talk) 14:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If true, and it is true, then the blaim for the present crise should be laid at the feet of Keynes and not the free market economists and the market it self. We should revise the history espcially the death of Keynes and the Keynesian revival. 70.150.94.194 (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Naysay, good to hear that, I agree with what you say. 94.194 - an alternative view would be Keynes can be credited in part with the relatively swift recovery that seems to be on the horizon? FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Factual Inaccuracy

This statement:

• "Then, in seven short years, under massive Keynesian spending, the U.S. went from the greatest depression it has ever known to the greatest economic boom it has ever known. The success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments around the world adopted its policies."

Is factually inaccurate and mathematically untrue as well. It did not at all help to alieviate the Great Depression. FDR did try this and it did fail. World War 2 ended the depression, not Keynesian policy nor did the New Deal. Hoover did the same thing and he turned a recession into a depression. Go back to the records and you will find that to be the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.12.223.111 (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I hear a lot of back and forth on this issue, and I agree that it was not "seven short years" from bust to boom and this statement should not stand. None the less, as I understand Keynesian concepts (correct me if I am wrong), war spending also constitutes an influx of capital to the private sector from the public and is, in this regard, a Keynesian intervetion. It is not the fact that we make gunpowder and then burn it that improves the economy but that people are put to work. The US did not bring home any spoils of war; rather the US dished out even more cash in the Marshal Plan - a plan that likely owed a lot to the thinking of Keynse - and thereby "bought" the stability that allowed the US to continue consolidating its power and wealth. Signed Johnfravolda (talk) 07:04, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi John, yep war spending has a similar effect on the economy to the stimulus spands, in that their both examples of the Government directly boosting demand. According to Minsky there was resistance to Keynesian thinking at decision making level until about 1939, so its not neccessarily fair to say his methods were tried and failed in the 30s. There was fiscal stimuli or pump priming as it was then known, but not on anywhere near the scale that Keynes would have advised. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Bias in page

The introduction strikes me as rather on the biased side; for example, regarding the Great Depression it states that "...in seven short years, under massive Keynesian spending, the U.S. went from the greatest depression it has ever known to the greatest economic boom it has ever known. The success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments around the world adopted its policies."

Well, I'm not sure if seven years can correctly be considered "short," but I know that many economists consider the Keynesian response to the Great Depression less than a "resounding success," and there are many reasons for it's adoption by "almost all" capitalist governments other than it's so-called "resounding success" (it's worth noting that, for government officials, Keynesianism is a self-serving ideology that can be interpreted to justify many policies they wanted to adapt anyway).

At another point, the article says that "...Pigou was far from being a cold hearted advocate of raw laissez faire capitalism..." Implication: anyone who advocates "raw laissez faire capitalism" is "cold hearted."

I also think this article would be more balanced if more time was dedicated to criticisms of Keynes; numerous authors have published extensive critiques of his works, but only two of his critics are referenced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.101.201 (talk) 05:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi , I’ve re- wrote the lede to try and make it sound a little more balanced. In the 50s and 60s unemployment in western economies was consistently very low – on average over 4 times lower than it was either in the decades prior to WW II or during the last 3 decades where until late 2008 Keynes influence on policy makers had been strongly weakened by Friedman and others who tend towards the neo – classical view. So i dont think an arugment that Keynes policies were popular just beacause they help politicians is strong ( i know that isnt what you were saying).

Youre right that Keynes isnt generally regarded as having a decisive influence in ending the great depression, even by sources generally favourable to him. Sorry for implying advocates of laissez faire capitalism are cold hearted, i dont think all of them are at all and ive re-wrote that sentence.

In general , biographical articles on wiki seem to have a slight bias in favour of the subject. The articles on Hayek and Friedman for example are missing some very strong , well sourced and IMO well deserved criticism. I agree though we could have a bit more criticism, such as Schumpters argument tha Keynes neglected the long term and maybe the common (though falsifiable) slur that he was pro Nazi FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Accusations of anti-Semitism

Some scholars and others have accused Keynes of harboring anti-Jewish attitudes, which he expressed in some of his letters and other writings For instance, an extract from his writings says: " have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, and their presence among us is a living example of the insurmountable difficulties that exist in merging race characteristics, in making cats love dogs ... It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains. "John Maynard Keynes on 'repulsive', 'impure', 'ugly' Jews" - Damian Thompson, blog, The Telegraph (21 January 2009)

Id suggest the above criticism is best not included in the main article. Its true Keynes was anti semetic in some of his private letters but he was pro jew publicly - which is admitted in the Univ. of Alberta source above, which also argues that

I also have doubts that the Kyens quote on them being repulsive is accurate - its sourced from a blog which itself is sourced from another blog! Granted it is true Keynes said a few things privately that were almost as bad.

In practice though Keynes used his influence on government both to secure safe passage to England for his Jewish friends or those he just admired like Wittgenstein, and spoke out strongly against the persecution of Jews in Germany in 1935. He was arguing that Hitler would have to be stopped by force when conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic were favouring appeasement. To be fair its somewhat absurd that the right are criticising Keynes on this ground considering their record over the past few decades. As even this telegraph article admits anti Semitism has been strong in American conservative circles until quite recently, only thanks to determined decades long campaigns from the likes of Pastor Hagge have they became pro Jewish. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:30, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Source does not support statement

I noticed the back-and-forth regarding deletion of the statement "Few senior economists in the U.S. agreed with Keynes in the 1930s." The statement is soured to this recent newspaper article ^ a b c d e Liz Hoggard (21 October 2008), Ten things you didn't know about Keynes, Evening Standard, a copy of which can be read by following this link:Hoggard.

Nowhere in the Hoggard article did I find any mention of how the work of Keynes was perceived by senior US economists of the 1930s.

Perhaps the editor who restored this statement sourced it to the wrong article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnfravolda (talk • contribs) 18:04, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I restored the sentence since an Anon IP removed it without explaining why and there was a source attached. If the source does not corroborate the info then remove the info or remove the reference and add a fact tag. I did not review the reference at all when I restored the info. A new name 2008 (talk) 19:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.I will figure out how to do the "fact tag." It seems likely that the sentence, although sweeping and unspecific, reflects reality of the time, since it is unlikely that any new set of ideas would become established within a community of academics without resistance from the old guard. The sentance that follows, "With time, however, his ideas became more widely accepted," is similarly broad but obviously true when one considers the fact that we still talk about Keynes. But also in this case the source is suspect since, although it dates from the correct time period (1940), it is written by a journalist from "the left" and does not necessarily signify that the ideas of Keynes were mainstream. It may be argued that these last two sentences in the paragraph are in fact uninformative in the context of the paragraph.

I changed the sentence slightly to say most of the 1930s. According to biographers like Minsky and Skidelsky, Keynesian thinkng began to gain general acceptance in the US in the closing years of the decade. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

In need of clean up

I removed this section from the article because it`s more political than encyclopedic: maybe someone can clean this up... Blablablob (talk) 12:26, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

He assumed that (marginal) labour productivity decreases with expanding employment. He combined this position with the marginal productivity theory of wages, implying that real wages decrease with increasing employment. This was shown to be empirically incorrect by the economist Dunlop, and Keynes accepted this. Keynes also suggested in the General Theory that inflation would occur only near "full employment" (in his sense), but it has been observed in many cases that inflation creeps up in states of severe underemployment (Stagflation). The assumption entertained by Keynes that inflation can only occur near full employment is still maintained in modern macroeconomics (→NAIRU). Keynes held that the cause of unemployment is a too high rate of savings, or insufficient investment expenditure. He conjectured that the amount of labour supplied is different when the decrease in real wages is due to a decrease in the money wage, than when it is due to an increase in the price level, assuming money wages stay constant. This conjecture relates to the "actual attitudes of workers" and is "not theoretically fundamental", although the New Keynesian economics emphasises this point.

Id say that section belongs more in one of the articles on Keynesian economics. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

New files

Recently the files below were uploaded and they appear to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think they would be a useful addition, please feel free to include any of them.

• File:Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes; (Giles) Lytton Strachey by Lady Ottoline Morrell (2).jpg
• File:Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell; John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes; (Giles) Lytton Strachey by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg
• File:Julian Ottoline Vinogradoff (née Morrell); Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes; Augustine Birrell by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg

Dcoetzee 01:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks, but looks like the deletionists got them :-( FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Factual Inaccuracy

Adam Smith? Isn't that very ironic as an influence? --130.243.148.247 (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

'Scuse me? For an economist? Who do you think A.Smith was: a prime minister? NaySay (talk) 15:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Id guess 148.247's point is that Adam Smith is widely seen as a champion of the free market, while Keynes is seen by some as the most effective advocate of an opposing approach (though he's seen by others as the saviour of capitalism, and hated for it by the far left just as he's loathed by free market fundamentalists). Our article on Smith seems to take this view. I think you're right not to see the Irony though NaySay, Smith like Keynes can be viewed as path finder for the middle way, here's a great article from the by Amartya Sen FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Why is this segment titled "Factual inaccuracy"? Johnfravolda (talk) 21:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Milton Friedman, not Nixon coined the phrase "we are all keynesians now" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.140.125.11 (talk) 00:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks,I think you're right though I understand Nixon was much more famous for saying it. I've addressed this in the influence section, might re write the lead accordingly to. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite June 14 2009

Last year I announced on this talk page the intention to re-write this article in preparation for a featured article drive. There were no objections, and while there have been many quality edits made since I started contributing, its probably fair to say to no other single editor has been doing sustained work here. I've therefore gone ahead and unilaterally done the re-write.

One of the big challenges in writing about Keynes is the overwhelming abundance of sources. Literally whole libraries of exegesis have been written about the man and his works. Accordingly one finds oneself thinking more about what to leave out rather than what to include, and no one person can hope to call this in a way that will be satisfactory to all. I've tried to keep as closely as possible to the previous community decisions about the article, though if it were up to me Id have left out a lot of the existing content to make room for facts which seem to me more significant. I have however moved quite a lot of stuff about, but where I've deleted old work its mostly because it was redundant content or as I noticed sentences which had been lifted verbatim from sources.

Use of Quotes

Quotes have been used more liberally than usually seems the case for articles that have aspirations to FA status. Two main reasons for this – Keynes provoked such intense reactions in others and spoke so eloquently himself that selected original words are often the most effective way to communicate key elements of his story. Secondly, since ToasterGate, the community has shown heightened desire to avoid plagiarism – even cases where the source material has been partially paraphrased and attributed to the original source. On the other hand, I've seen no evidence that our prohibition against OR has be loosened, which remains must tighter than the restrictions placed on editors of other encyclopedias like Britanica. Increased used of quotes is one answer to the problem posed to the inhibiting pressure against content creation caused by us having strong prohibitions against both OR and plagiarism. Some might feel that the quotes in the reception section give undue weight to the pro Keynes view -however if one checks best available sources like the compendious John Maynard Keynes – critical responses there are literally scores of equally effusive quotes to choose from, many from noteable commentators of the first rank.

References

I should have no difficulties referencing just about every new clause I've added, however it would invariably be with existing sources so it might not add that much to the article and as the appeal of a Biography is largely human interest I don't want to detract from readability with overly dense references. Of course Im happy for folk to add tags in any areas where they feel a reference is needed.

Globalize Tag

I've removed this tag after making some efforts to increase the coverage of Keynes's international significance. It might be worth saying that during Keynes's lifetime , especially regarding financial matters, there was an Anglo – American hegemony on a scale that might seem scarcely imaginable to those who have grown up in our much more egalitarian and globalised world and who haven't studied history in depth. This was the case both in practical economics and in terms of theoretical work. Skidelksy specifically says in his biography that while the General Theory was reviewed extensively in both journals and popular newspapers , the only reaction from outside the US and America worthy of note came from the Swiss.

I don't have the exact figures, but I remember from my economic history class that the US + UK economy formed something like 75% of the World economy during the 1950's. That said, I don't know if it has any bearing on the geographical spread of economic theory. LK (talk) 14:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality Tag

Most of the issues raised by the tagger were addressed almost immediately after it was added back in march, but I thought it would be fair to leave it up for a while. The article has much more criticism than comparable articles on other influential and controversial economists like Milton Friedman, with some of the criticisms left un-rebutted. If anything the article seems to be relatively biased against the subject, but I kind of feel Keynes wont mind that too much. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Should the peerage box be on the page?

Given that Keynes was only a Baron (lowest rank in UK peerage), and that he was the only member of his 'line', should there be a peerage navbox on the page? If no one objects, I will remove in a few days. LK (talk) 05:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Influence

Doesn't this section suffer from recentism? Last two years are covered by three or four as much text as the period of "Keynesian Ascendancy". -- Vision Thing -- 14:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll re-balance the influence sections soon. The revival is still likely to be the largest one though, as I think folk are more interested in recent events. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Puff?

Id say the material deleted from the reception section is needed to keep balance and NPOV , unless we were to take out several of the criticism. Granted there's more than one would find for most biographies , both criticism and positive reception, but this reflects the reality that Keynes and hsi works provoked quite literally whole libraries worth of responses. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

That was a sock of our resident Austrian troll, the banned user karmaisking. He was carrying out his threat to vandalize mainstream economics pages, if we didn't let him have his way on the Austrian school pages. Policy is that edits made by banned users can be reverted by anyone on sight. Unfortunately, KiK keeps on coming back, even though everything he writes is eventually reverted. Apparently, he finds some sort of mean satisfaction in annoying people here. The best thing to do is probably to follow WP:RBI, Revert, Ignore, Block. best, LK (talk) 15:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

thanks, I've heard that name before! FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If you look through some KiK's socks, you'll see that they have a distinctive style, so you can identify KiK by his writing style and by the viewpoint that he pushes. Also, you can use geolocate on anonymous IP edits to see if they originate from Australia, where KiK lives. Drop me a line if you suspect that an editor is a KiK sock, and I'll try to give guidence about whether the writing style fits. Regards LK (talk) 17:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

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