> SA: ‘The "sense that Keynes meant" was of policy-induced full employment.’
>
> In fact, Keynes thought full employment was deeply problematic, as he made clear in the Second World War, when he campaigned to have workers’ wages capped to stop them from taking advantage of the increased demand for their services (this is all in Skidelsky’s last volume of biography).
Of course full employment is problematic, it has the potential to trigger inflation. Is there a counter-argument? Imposing wage caps in wartime is a way of coping with full employment, not a way of combating it. (Didn't Britain also have price caps to limit profits?)
Really, James. Here in the US we have Slate.com, which took contrarianism to the limits of tolerability but then finally exhausted the world's patience when it ran a piece arguing that Creed is not a bad band. Let that be a lesson to you.
SA