Robert Skidelsky – Keynes

The Joe Walker Podcast | 22 March 2021 | 1h 25m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify

Interview with Robert Skidelsky about his three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920 (Vol. 1), The Economist as Savior, 1920-1937 (Vol. 2), and Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946 (Vol. 3). Details the complex Keynes-Hayek relationship and how narrow academic specialisation leads to useless economists, arguing Keynes’s broader philosophical education was crucial. Economic laws, unlike scientific ones, are context-bound, with no grand universal truths. Explains Keynes’s theory of inherent economic uncertainty, contrasting it with Hayek’s view of temporary risk. Argues that post-2008 austerity and the quantity theory of money would have drawn Keynes’s scathing criticism, who’d champion government spending to balance the economy, not just budgets. Suggests that economics, as currently practised, risks becoming an occult science or disappearing.