Talk:2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence

Extend title to 2010?

Should the page be moved to 2008-2010 resurgence? Is the movement ongoing in the new year? AniRaptor2001 (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Policy makers seem to have become lastingly more Keynesian, but Im not sure further process is being made. There has been a strong fight back by deficit hawks and other conservatives. There seems to be some further progress being made in accademia, I havent been paying enough attention to be sure.

The real action now is on how to tackle national deficits which both sides agree has to be done (with varying degrees of urgency) - the hawks want cuts in government spending, the progressives want highter taxation on the Rich, there's a movement towards global taxes that they wont be able to dodge by hopping between tax jurisdictions. Long term, there needs to be a global re-balancing as nations can only repay debt in the aggregate if they are earning more than they consume. Keynes didnt have many specific suggestions on these issues as he didnt envisage that such massive imbalances would be allowed to develop.

So Id prefer the title stayed as it is, though perhaps a 2010 subsection could be added to show further events? However Ive no strong objection if others disagree. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the great reply. The reason I asked was because I noticed that the Volcker rule is discussed under "US and Britain", which occurred in 2010. Additionally, it might make sense that because the financial crisis extended into 2010, Keynesian ideas would continue to be discussed. In any case, I'll let more knowledgeable people make any decisions ;) AniRaptor2001 (talk) 21:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Question here, did Keynesian ideas ever lose influence? I know that keynesianism was briefly abandoned in the late 70's and early 80's and monetarism tried, but it seems to me that keynesian policies never really "lost influence" so to speak. Certainly the Greenspan put and Bush's first "stimulus" are examples of keynesian influences. Of the 2 chairmen in this period, greenspan constantly lowered interest rates (a keynesian policy) for credit expansion and Bernanke is an ultra-keynesian.Teeninvestor (talk) 01:25, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

• Things can change pretty rapidly, especially following a steep recession. Obviously Keynesianism lost influence, and judging by the past few years, despite constant promotion by those such as Paul Krugman, has not led the US to a full recovery. Check back in a year or two. Keynes is likely heading for another beat-down. 10stone5 (talk) 22:55, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Is there a place this should maybe be merged to?

This article seems like a lot of synthesis, and I'm not at all sure it's worthy of its own article. Is there a place we should consider merging it instead? Thargor Orlando (talk) 15:27, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, you're right there's a lot of synthesis, however that is a good thing. Paraphrasing and the good synthesis of different sources are the two essential means by which we ensure our articles avoid plaigurism and copyright violation. As the article creator and primary writer I may be biased, but I'd consider a merge or even a merge tag to be as out of the question as it would be for our article on say the 2012 Summer Olympics. There have been many thousands of articles in reliable sources, and at least several dozen books, including from top tier university presses, which are entirely about this subject. If you still have concerns about synth, the single best online source for you to read might be this one Like this article, it addresses the rise and fall of resurgence, and reviews the global, accademic and political dimensions. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The problem with synthesis is that is that we don't do synthesis here, it's basically the type of original research that's frowned upon. There's a lot of discussion about how this "resurgence" isn't really something discussed, and a quick look through Google Books and Google Scholar seem to suggest that. I'm thinking a merge might be appropriate for the information here, because deleting it might be the other option. Thargor Orlando (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, we not only do do synthesis, it is a close to essential skill for those who build up our larger articles. I agree its a shame our policy doesnt explictly say this. In fact I changed it so for a few days it did. SlimVirgin took the view that the fact we do good synth is so obvious it goes without saying, and reversed my change. Beacause she's done so much for the encylopedia, I soon stopped debating the point.

What we dont do is synthesise sources in such a way as to advance an original position. It's debatable that the article may have originally done this when I created it back in Jan 2009, at that time I didnt understand all our key policies. But now there have been so many reliable sources making the same points in the article, that to someone familiar with the sources, there is no question of OR at all. Im disappointing to find someone who doesnt like the article. It has been widely discussed across the web by folk from all sides of the political spectrum, yet I noticed that until late 2012 it had a perfect "5" for all the AFT critera, showing that all readers who bothered to rate the article thought it was objective. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I promise that my criticisms are not of the text itself or the research. It's a very detailed article, which is why I'm talking here before nominating it for a merger or deletion, there's clearly a lot of work done here. It appears, given the sources available, that this is still an original idea (the concept of a specific "Keynesian resurgence" in the limited time frame offered). Maybe the basics belong in the history section of Keynesian economics? Thargor Orlando (talk) 20:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes I've spent about 300 hours reading hundreds of the articles, scholarly papers and books back to back. I appreciate you starting a discussion before going to AfD.

Some of the thread from 2009 on this talk page are now unhelpful and potentially misleading. It made perfect sense to challenge the article on OR grounds back in 2009. Though even then it was untennable - even as early as Dec 2008, you had people like the Financials Times economics editor saying "The sudden resurgence of Keynesian policy is a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades" I'll set up archiving on this page in a few weeks to stop this happening again, but will leave it for now as the old comments may provide context.

Just to re-emphasize, the premise of this article is now absolutely not original. There have been whole books about the Keynesian resurgence from top university presses, such as Harvard.

Keynesian economics is largely an academic article. This is largely a political one, though granted it deals with the interplay between academic theory and actual policy. There is only a bare minimum of info on the economic basics, and I'd be against the removal of any of it as it provides useful context for the reader.

Im still shocked anyone can view this article as not important. Its universally accepted that government policy stance does affect the real economy, which in turn hugely affects people - for the billion or so in severe poverty and struggling even to pay for their food, its literally a matter of life and death. (Whats not universally accepted is that government can produce good outcomes in the economy, except by getting out to the way, but that view is represented in the article.) That said, I guess there is some validity to the view - this article gets far fewer page hits than valuable articles on video game character articles for example, which deletionists are destroying every day. So if you manage to get consensus for a delete or a merge, rather then crying myself to sleep, I'll console myself with the knowledge that its no great loss in the grand scheme of things.

Ok, due to limited time that's about all I'd like to say on the matter. If you still have concerns and want further discussion, your options include waiting for other editors to join the discussion, starting an AfD (seems a total waste of time to me, but strange things do sometimes happen), or you could drop a note on relevant projects. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Some spot checks on the sources aren't really supporting the concept of a "resurgence" as is being described here, and you mention a Harvard book: I can't seem to locate it in Google Books or Amazon. It could go a long way. Thargor Orlando (talk) 21:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

A book from Harvard University press I can recommend having read it back to back is The Return to Keynes (2010) isbn: 0-674-03538-0. I already linked you an impeccable online source that uses the word "resurgence". You might need to register on the FT, its free for limited access and only takes a few minutes. Sources 2-4 use slightly different wording such as "Keynesian revival". They are also online, dont need registration and are well worth a quick check. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Reading back, I don't think this is something that fits the policies in place here. It's not a judgement of importance or effort, but of appropriateness. Between the synthesis, the original research inherent in its creation, and the POV issues inherent in an article that assumes a resurgence that the evidence isn't really supporting. I'm taking this to AfD, I think. It's nothing personal. Thargor Orlando (talk) 22:19, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

It's no problem. If you have concerns about the article, you have concerns. As said, many much more popular articles are destroyed every day. If we get an unexpected result, it will just be a single drop in a huge chalice of tears. FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:03, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

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Article rewrite

The article is based on a popular but inaccurate conception of the state of economic academia. It is convenient for the public and the media to see policies which were being floated as being indicative of a shift to Keynes. However, for the purposes of an encyclopedia, this is inadequate. "Keynesianism" has been academically dead since the 70s- its closest living relative as far as a school to which one could "shift" to is New Keynesianism, which folded itself into the new neoclassical synthesis that provided the basis for much of the policy that reduced the impact of the GFC (Ben Bernanke, anyone)? That is to say, policy recommendations that are said by this article to be "a return to Keynes" are in fact the result of entirely contemporary academia.

At most, it can be said that there was an expansion of interest in certain policies (some of which were first recommended by Keynes), because what the conditions called for. It was not because of some paradigm shift in economics. New data meant new and better models within the existing paradigm, which also informed shifts in policy- these new models, in so far as they changed the paradigm, had very little to do with Keynes- he has been dead for years, and economics has moved past him in the same way physics has moved past Newton.

The fact that certain politically active economists describe their policy recommendations as Keynesian to news outlets is not sufficient basis for an entire article to portray an entire field correspondingly, especially when it contradicts most of the rest of wikipedia when it comes to the state of economics vis-a-vis "schools of thought".

VineFynn (talk) 05:11, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this input, parts are very hepful The above view would probably would probably be entirely correct from the local perspective they have in certain universities. From a global perspective, parts are inaccurate. For starters, the article doesn't focus on academia - more so on the resurgence of Keynesian policy making. Even if Keynesian economics had been academically dead, that's would have been almost irrelevant when policy makers in just about every administration across the planet understand Keynesian demand management principles, and proved more when willing to employ them on scale when the economic situation called for it. But it's not academically dead. There's a whole school that, at least back in 2008 & probably still now, remained way more faithful to Lord Keynes original thought than the miss-named New Keynesianism. It's entirely false to say this article is based on popular conception. When I started writing about the Keynesian resurgence back in 2008 it wasn't, AFAIK, even whispered about in popular sources. Or even academic \ Financial ones for that matter, I was admittedly violating WP:OR when I first started on this, as was a wiki-newbie back in 2008. Many thousands of top tier sources have since been published, and these are what this article has been based.

Lastly, you're correct the resurgence wasn't triggered by some paradigm shift in economics. The sentence in the lede saying "In 2008, a rapid shift of opinion took place among many prominent economists in favour of Keynesian stimulus" may be be too suggestive that something like that happened. I'll re-write accordingly. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)