Cobi Brough
Microeconomics
Essay 2
John Maynard Keynes Widely known English economist, journalist and financier, John Maynard Keynes, is best known for his theories on the causes of prolonged unemployment, referred to as Keynesian economics. After developing the groundbreaking Keynesian economics theory, John Maynard Keynes is regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern day macroeconomics theory. John Maynard Keynes was born on June 5, 1883 in Cambridge to an upper middle class family. Keynes excelled academically and earned a scholarship to Eton College, and then preceded to move forward to study mathematics at Kings College, where Keynes studied under Alfred Marshall. It was he who encouraged Keynes to take up the relatively new science of economics. He chose a course in civil service, which led him to be appointed a position in Foreign Affairs. Keynes took a position in Britain, where he collected his material for his first book in economics, Indian Currency and Finance, in which he described how the Indian’s monetary system worked. When he grew bored, Keynes left the civil service and returned to Cambridge in 1908, to become a lecturer. Keynes was a prominent journalist and speaker and was one of the “Bloomsbury Group of literary greats.” He was also one of the architects of the postwar system of fixed exchange rates. In 1925, he married Russian dancer, Lydia Lopokova. Keynes was made a Lord in 1942, and passed away on April 21, 1946. John Maynard Keynes became a celebrity before becoming a well-known economist, from his eloquent book The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919. This book was written to express his objection to the “punitive reparation payments” imposed on Germany. He wrote that if Germany tried paying the large amount of money that the Allied countries demanded, the country would stay poor, and therefore politically unstable. Economists state, we now know that Keynes was, indeed, right. However, it was the Great Depression of 1929-39 that gave Keynes to dominate economic theory at the time by challenging the classical orthodoxy. During the Great Depression outbreak, the classical response was to “balance the government budget,” through tax increases and government spending. Keynes, however, argued otherwise; he believed the government should do the opposite. Throughout the 1930’s, Keynes advocated higher government spending funded through higher borrowing. This was the basis of Keynes work; that during a recession there were wasted resources due to falling private sector investment and spending. In which case, Keynes believes the government should step in, increasing government spending to use the unemployed resources. He expressed this belief in his most popular book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in result of Britain’s economic woes. Keynes General Theory, along with his other pieces of work, revolutionized economists’ way of thinking. It showed that only the help of government spending could maintain full