Letters: What Keynes really thought

Re “Niall Ferguson’s blooper,” Opinion, May 7

Jonah Goldberg fails to address what is revealing about Niall Ferguson’s ad hominem blooper on John Maynard Keynes’ sexuality, for which the Harvard historian has given “an unqualified apology,” according to the New York Times.

The implication of Ferguson’s remarks is that Keynes was in favor of big deficits and was not concerned about the long-term effects of his economic philosophy. That is far from the truth. Keynes considered economics to be a moral science. His policies were aimed at maintaining social and economic equilibrium. This is the reason Keynes advocated immediate government spending to stimulate demand in a down economy and fiscal restraint in better times.

As for Keynes’ famous adage, “In the long run we are all dead” — well, we are.

Gary Nagy

Gardena

Harry Hopkins, a senior advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, said in testimony about New Deal spending to a Senate committee in 1935, “Senator, people don’t eat in the long run.”

It’s not “immediate gratification,” as Ferguson and other conservatives might have it, but “immediate” survival.

Lance Small

Del Mar

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