Fight Of The Century

[Keynes]

John Maynard Keynes

[Hayek]

F.A. hayek

[Keynes]

Round Two

[Hayek]

Round 2. 0

[Keynes]

Same economists. Same beliefs

[Hayek]

New microphones

[Keynes]

New Mustaches

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go

[Keynes]

Here we are, peace out Great Recession

Thanks to me, as you see, we're not in a depression

Recovery, destiny, if you follow my lesson

Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

[Hayek]

We brought out the shovels

And we're still in a ditch and still digging

Don't you think it's time for a switch from the hair of the dog?

Friend the party is over, the long run is here, it's time to get sober

[Keynes]

Are you kidding?

My cure works perfectly fine

Have a look, the Great Recession ended back in '09

I deserve credit, things would've been worse

All the estimates prove it, I'll quote chapter and verse

[Hayek]

The econometricians, they're ever so pious

Are they doing real science or just confirming their bias?

Their Keynesian models are tidy and neat

But that top-down approach is a fatal conceit

[Chairman Ref]

Which way should we chose? More bottom-up or more top-down?

The fight continues. Keynes and Hayek, Second Round

It's time to weigh in. More from the top or from the ground?

Let's listen to the greats, Keynes and Hayek throwin' down

[Keynes]

We could've done better had we only spent more

Too bad that only happens when there's a world war

You can carp all you want about stats and regression

Do you deny WWII cut short The Depression?

[Hayek]

Wow

One data point and you're jumping for joy

The last time I checked, wars only destroy

There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank

As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity

Ration meat, ration butter, a life of austerity

When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster

Yet the economy thrived and grew faster

[Keynes]

You too only see what you want to see

The spending of war clearly goosed GDP

Unemployment was over, almost down to zero

That's why I'm the master, that's why I'm the hero

[Hayek]

Creating employment's a straightforward craft

When the nation's at war and there's a draft

If every worker were staffed in the army and fleet

We'd have full employment and nothin' to eat

[Hook: Chairman Ref]

[Hayek]

Jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves

People work to live better, to put food on the shelves

Real growth means production of what people demand

That's entrepreneurship, not your central plan

[Keynes]

My solution is simple, and easy to handle

It's spending that matters, why's that such a scandal?

Money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices

Revitalizing the economies juices

It's just like an engine that's stalled and gone dark

To bring it to life we need a quick spark

Spending's the life blood that gets the flow going

Where it goes doesn't matter - just get spending flowing!

[Hayek]

You see slack in some sectors as a general glut

But some sectors are healthy, only some in a rut

So spending's not free, that's the heart of the matter

Too much gets wasted as cronies get fatter

The economy's not a car, there's no engine to stall

No expert can fix it, there's no "it" at all

The economy's us, we don't need a mechanic

Put away the wrenches, the economy's organic

[Keynes]

So what would you do to help those unemployed?

This is the question you seem to avoid

When we're in a mess, would you have us just wait?

Doing nothing until markets equilibrate?

[Hayek]

I don't wanna do nothing, there's plenty to do!

The question I ponder is: Who plans for whom?

Do I plan for myself, or leave it to you?

I want plans by the many, not by the few

Let's not repeat what created our troubles

I want real growth, not a series of bubbles

Stop bailing out losers

Let prices work

If we don't try to steer them

They won't go berserk

[Keynes]

C'mon! Are you kidding?

Don't Wall Streets gyrations challenge your worldview of self-regulation?

Even you must admit that the lesson we've learned is

More oversight's needed or else we'll get burned

[Hayek]

Oversight? The government's long been in bed

With those Wall Street exec's and the firms that they bled

Capitalism's about profit and loss

You bail out the losers, there's no end to the cost

The lesson I've learned: It's how little we know

The world is complex, not some circular flow

The economy's not a class you can master in college

To think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

[Keynes]

You get on your high horse, and you're off to the races

I look at the world on a case-by-case basis

When people are suffering I roll up my sleeve

And do what I can do to cure our disease

The future's uncertain, our outlooks are frail

That's why free markets are so prone to fail

In a volatile world, we need more discretion

So state intervention can counter depression

[Hayek]

People aren't chess men you move on a board at your whim

Their dreams and desires ignored

With political incentives, discretion's a joke

Those dials your twisting? Just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices

So prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis

Give us a chance so we can discover the most valuable ways to serve one another