Economies: None Dare...pp. 75, 76

"It is generally believed in England among students of this conspiracy that John Maynard Keynes produced his General Theory of Money and Credit at the behest of certain Insiders of international finance who hired him to concoct a pseudo-scientific justification for government deficit spending-just as the mysterious League of Just Men hired Karl Marx to write the Communist Manifesto."

Mother fucker that's a hell of a sentence. I mean, the words all have independent meanings but, damn, put this shit show together and it's all kinds of wrong. Where do I even begin? Well, if a student turned in a paper and this sentence was contained, I'd fail it. There are two qualifiers here that are doing way too much work: "it's generally believed" and "certain Insiders" (which would be fine if they were named). Conspiracy theorists like to do two things: one is overload with citations and sources. I've mentioned this before: but it's designed to emulate what they perceive is how academics work. 

The other thing they like to do is pretend that they are privy to secrets that no one else is. One of the most important and fundamental draws of conspiracy theories. It's one of the facets that suck people in so that they start thinking the Titanic didn't sink and they end up fighting with Mark Sargent over whether the Earth is flat or hollow. You can see here that Allen is trying to act like he's got the secret knowledge when he explains that English students of the Conspiracy believe X. This, could be right...but it is similar to saying that "students of the conspiracy believe the Earth is Hollow and the Nazis have a base inside it." I'm sure that the previous sentence is true in that conspiracy theorists believe it, but it's not true content-wise. I also made it up as my go-to for ridiculous conspiracy theories but a quick Google search is probably going to tell me that there are a number of people that believe it. 

The other major problem with this claim is that Allen says that Keynes came up with his justification for deficit spending "just as" Marx was writing the Manifesto. This isn't possible. Marx dies in March of 1883 and three months later Keynes is born. I discussed in an earlier post why Allen's claim about Marx is wrong so I'll not retread it here because we need to talk about Keynes and his economic theory. For the sake of brevity and, admittedly, because I don't understand the subtleties of economic theory--I am going to give a brief overview. 

The gist of Keynesian economics is that you raise taxes on the largest sources of wealth during times when the economy is booming. This should generate a fund that could be used during times of economic downturn in which taxes would be lowered to alleviate whatever crisis presented itself. The system also funs afoul of supply-side economics arguing rather that demand is what drives economies. Which makes more sense if you stop for a second to consider it. Ford can make all of the F-150s it wants, but the supply isn't going to do anything until people want to buy it. The biggest argument presently would be the Xbox series X. It has no supply but the demand is such that they instantly sell out. Supply-side economics would state that more money should be given to Microsoft to increase supply thus allowing more to be produced. However, if the product didn't work and no one wanted it, all that kind of economic policy accomplishes is inflating Microsoft's coffers so they don't suffer a loss if no one buys the product. 

I can't comment on how much Keynesian economics is better or worse than other systems. What I do know is that Allen doesn't understand it and his opposition is based on the idea that the government exists at all and that if it has to it would ever spend money on poor people. The other side of Keynesian economics that Allen hates is that the funds would be spent on social and safety programs. For all of the talk about being the "friend to the working man" that these people offer, they sure do want them to starve to death. 

I'd give Allen 1000$ if he could have explained what Keynes meant in his economic program before he gets to criticize it.

We're still on Nixon though, and Nixon's budget offends Allen personally because it's complex. But it's also more planned, which means that it's not that complex. I mean, you can be against a planned economy (if you know what that means because all economies are planned they're just not "Planned"), but you can't claim to not understand it. What we also have to remember Nixon's budget is going to be higher because he was in charge of the Vietnam war at the time. Every military thinker worth their salt will address the financial drain on economies that wars are--even Sun Tzu mentions this. When Allen criticizes Nixon via Senator Harry Byrd (D-Va) who claims that Nixon's budget will increase the deficit to 88B from 55B that he inherited from LBJ he's neglecting the giant war happening in Vietnam. I'm not a guy to rush to Nixon's defense, but this isn't fair. 

"Business blames "inflation" on the unions, and unions blame "inflation" on business, but only the government can cause "inflation."

Inflation in the most simplistic of terms: is that there is more money than goods. So what cost 1$ today costs 1.10 tomorrow. that would be an inflation rate of 10% per day, which is an unreasonable high rate of inflation. Allen blames it all on deficit spending, which is not the case. Deficit spending can increase inflation if too much money is directed at programs that no one wants. If the government artificially drives the price of corn down to a specific level you could have inflation with regard to that specific market. However, inflation can come from the business sector as well, if they set prices too high for common goods and the amount of money that used to buy a bushel of corn is now higher. Again, I'm an amateur at this discipline but I'm at least making an attempt to understand it. 

His fear of inflation is just bullshit. It's the same bullshit that informs any right-wing conspiracy theorist: deficit spending is only bad when it's spent on people. All other forms of spending are just fine and we never quibble about that kind of spending. The meta-point here is Allen's ignorance for how the deficit even works. I said this early on, but it bears repeating: Allen thinks that someone can "own" the government if the government is in debt to that person. This is what he thinks the Rockefellers have done with Nixon, or what the CFR did with Nixon, or whoever is in charge. It's such a profound misunderstanding of how economies work, we don't owe someone that money, in fact--as long as there is still economic production within the US, that money doesn't have to be paid back. The countries that operate deficit-neutral or even with a surplus are countries that can physically fit inside Disney. 

Somehow this deficit spending is what makes us slaves, that, and not, say, being so dependent on your job that the coal company controls your housing, food, and transportation. These people always talk about financial responsibility as though it were the same personally as it is politically. It's not. The bank can repossess my house, but they cannot repossess the White House or the tanks we bought on credit. David Rockefeller was never going to own a B-52 just because he owns bonds.