Letters: Keynes misquoted

When former PM Manmohan Singh misquoted John Maynard Keynes

While opposing demonetisation, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, also an economics professor, misquoted the long-run concept of John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes wrote, “In the long run we are all dead” in one of his earlier works, A Tract on Monetary Reform, in 1923. He was not arguing that we should recklessly enjoy the present and not think about the future. He later propounded the view in his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, arguing that the economy can slip into a long-term underemployment equilibrium from which only government policy can rescue it. Short-term policies to improve the long-term situation were very much part of Keynesian economics. 

Keynes famous theorem of “digging holes and refilling them” is the greatest example of short-term policy to improve long-term employment and growth. Even changing opinion was quite a feature of Keynes. Winston Churchill famously said about him, “In a room, if you put two economists, you will have two opinions, except when one of them is Keynes, in which case you will have three opinions.”

I am quite sure that when teaching at the Delhi School of Economics, Singh would never have said this, because there would be too many bright students, who would correct him.

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay New Delhi

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