Much as I would love to say otherwise, I feel that the consensus that Keynesian economics is closer to our current economic system in regards to food and agriculture is correct.
What stuck out most to me was reading the third paragraph of part VI in Keynes, where he talks about a somewhat absurd situation, if the Treasury just buried a bunch of money, and then people had to go and dig it up. There wouldn't be unemployment, people would get money, communities would be worth more in terms of capital wealth, and it would, essentially, be a win-win for everyone (Keynes, part IV).
This is exactly the opposite of what Friedman says in his piece, how paying people for a)pointless tasks or b)not working at all is hurtful to an economy. On page 126, he talks about how "keeping oil wells idle most of the time to keep up prices seems to me featherbedding of precisely the same kind as paying coal firemen on diesel locomotives for being idle" (Friedman 126).
So how do these to principles tie in to our present day situation with agriculture in the United States, and more specifically, corn? The fact that the government is wasting so much money subsidizing farmers for corn that is being sold for less than it costs to grow points to a more Keynesian way of thinking: as long as people are being employed and making money and the economy is afloat even if it is all a sort of grand illusion, than hey, it works! The system works on a sort of basis where it doesn't really make sense if you look at what is actually happening(read: there is a ridiculous amount of corn in this country...so much so that instead of us dictating what we eat, what we eat dictates us), but it makes sense in theory (growing a lot of corn keeps some people employed, and the more they grow, the more they get paid). Corn growth in the United States clearly points to a more Keynesian way of thinking but in the end, farmers suffer from being caught up in a vicious cycle of growing lots of corn for next to nothing, and consumers suffer from eating so much corn in unhealthy fashions.
What strikes me most about your post is the first sentence. I completely agree with it. As much as I want to think that our economy is a neoclassical/liberal economy I am forced to recognize that we live in a Keynesian economy because of the vicious cycle you mentioned. I would like to think that each person has a say in the economy. That the government doesn't have that much sway and say over what happens in the economy. It's a very seductive thought. But it's nowhere near the truth. The truth is that, like Keynes believed corporations hold much more sway over the economy than the common man and one human mind.
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