Monte wrote:
Point of order -
I'm afraid you're economic knowledge is insufficient to call a "point of order." In fact, you demonstrate int his very post that you neither understand the source you cite nor the economy itself at a base level.
Monte wrote:
Investment, in a Keynesian sense, is not money put into 401k programs or other savings models. It's about spending on new plants and major equipment. Keynes saw savings as a leakage from the economy.
What's your talking about here is infrastructure, facilities, and durable goods investment. However, that's not the only kind of investment in the system; nor, for that matter, is this the only thing Keynes considered investment. Factories, roads, and durable goods only constitute an investment when they produce demonstrable economic gains over the period of use. They must appreciate in terms of productivity and growth, as opposed to simple monetary value. That said, personal investment and speculative investment are still very much investing in the economy. And whatever criticism of Keynes I have might, he was keenly aware of that reality. Investment makes capital, that is money, resources, time, and other productive energies, available to the economy as a whole wherein it would not otherwise be available. So, yes, Keynes would and did consider things like Stock Funds, Index Funds, 401(k)s (although he's a good 40 or 50 years before them), Retirement Accounts, and Savings Accounts as investments. To say otherwise is pure rubbish.
Monte wrote:
When you are talking about Keynes, you are talking about macroeconomics. Individual investment into a savings vehicle is a micro concern.
There is no separation between micro-economics and macro-economics. I'm not sure who's putting this BULLSHIT into your head, but they are patently wrong. And, the sooner you get past your misguided and flatly WRONG notion that the two fields of study have nothing to do with each other, the better off you'll be. The macro-economy is nothing more than the aggregation of all economic transactions, period. All economics is micro-economics.
I mean, seriously, if you can't see that the current depression was caused by aggregate bad behavior incentivized by other aggregate bad behavior, then you're lost. And since you want to presume to tell people they don't understand Keynes, let's look at his definition of a recession:
John Maynard Keynes wrote:
A recession is the negative growth macro-economic inefficiency that results from trends in micro-economic behavior.
_________________
Corolinth wrote:
Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.