John Maynard Keynes Project

Mason Bolen

How did Keynes argue the government should combat the Great Depression?

John Keynes believed that in order to make up the amount of money lost in the economy, the government needed to put that money into the economy themselves, instead of waiting for the population to spend theirs in the time of crisis.

Why did Franklin Roosevelt originally "ignore" Keynes?

Franklin Roosevelt saw Keynes’ theories as illogical, and as a rational person, he felt that the government should not take a risk to do such a thing unless it was a conventional method and would guarantee the economy to be returned to prosperity.→ Roosevelt also was uninterested in economics,

and was more concerned about the overall picture of the economy and if things as a whole were improving.

Did Keynes theories seem to work in the Great Depression?

→Yes, Keynes’ theory was used in order to help prepare for World War II in which the government put an excess amount of money into the economy, proving to pull people out of the depression and begin a new direction moving forward.

What would be one downside to Keynes theories?

The largest downside of Keynesian economics is that the national government, looked to be the power to offset the problem, unfortunately is always in a state of deficits in which it always is using more money than it already has. Therefore, in order to take charge in placing money into a certain area to rise its levels to their former positions, the government would need to eliminate and regulate its own spending, making sure that it spent its own real money. As this is the case and has been the case for so long throughout history, the method of adding additional weight to the already large load of money would eventually amass to a massive debt for the U.S. too large and only lead to worse problems.

Explain Keynes’ theory in a manner that is so simple, a 1st grader could understand it.

→ He thought that the instead of trying to get people to spend their money on things, the government would have to spend their own money to put all the money back that was there before.

How can Keynesian Economics be applied to the current economy?

During these times of recession in the U.S., prices fluctuate dramatically and the level of security many people feel with spending is very low. Therefore, people will be affected in different ways when choosing when or when not to purchase various things. The population is not consistent or reliable and there is no way to control the total amount of spending in the U.S. because of countless numbers of factors that go into the total output. Because this is so, the government is needed to step in and deliver a level of consistency through their money in order to generate the stability they would like see have throughout the nation.

End.