Americans don't like Keynes

"Clueless Ben" Bernanke

75% of Americans angry at government, think tax cuts work better than drunken sailor spending but believe government will do the latter.

See article below. My comment? I think Keynesian economics would be more popular if it worked. There is zero evidence that it will work in a "balance sheet recession," like the mother of them all that we have finally reached the end of the beginning of. After Clueless Ben helped create gigantic bubbles in our economy, the only realistic choice is to let asset values (painfully) reset to reasonable levels. Insane shenanigans and malfeasance and welfare for Wall Street makes it worse.

Politicians will always love Keynes for reasons I have discussed before. Keynes' view (as a socialist) was that mommy government is going to fix everyone's life. It is the good guy, the solution. If you need anything fixed, apply more government. In real life it doesn't work that way, but it means more power and more slush funds for politicians, so they continue to adore it.

Rasmussen: Americans Reject Keynesian Economics

"While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help. To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go… Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes…

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/busness/general_business/february_2010/americans_reject_keynesian_economics