lavendersparkle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lavendersparkle) wrote2009-07-27 10:38 am
lavendersparkle) wrote2009-07-27 10:38 am
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago and it inspired me to read The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. I tried to read it a few years ago and gave up around chapter 4 or 5 which involves defining lots of different types of cost and is a bit muddling if you never make it to the bit where you see how these different types of cost fit into the rest of the theory. This time I've nearly finished it and I've very much enjoyed it. Like Shakespeare, it feels a little bit like reading a lot of quotations because I've heard bits of it quoted before.
I think it makes a lot of sense. I've never previously had much interest in macroeconomics. Now I think that this was partly because the economy had been pootling along happily for years and how things work is less interesting when they don't need fixing. I think the major part of it is that a lot of macroeconomics I was taught was just so blatantly nonsense that I just couldn't bear to clutter my mind with it. I'm finding that The General Theory is a lot better at explaining how it all works and what's gone wrong. It also seems a lot more intelligent than the stuff I was taught as an undergraduate, not in a physics envy way, more in a coming to a complex nuanced understanding of an issue way. I feel like bits of the book manage to reasonably successfully refute economic theories which were developed after it was published.
Anyway, interesting stuff.
I think it makes a lot of sense. I've never previously had much interest in macroeconomics. Now I think that this was partly because the economy had been pootling along happily for years and how things work is less interesting when they don't need fixing. I think the major part of it is that a lot of macroeconomics I was taught was just so blatantly nonsense that I just couldn't bear to clutter my mind with it. I'm finding that The General Theory is a lot better at explaining how it all works and what's gone wrong. It also seems a lot more intelligent than the stuff I was taught as an undergraduate, not in a physics envy way, more in a coming to a complex nuanced understanding of an issue way. I feel like bits of the book manage to reasonably successfully refute economic theories which were developed after it was published.
Anyway, interesting stuff.