Public Debt and the Corruption of Contract: Can the Keynesian Cancer Be Excised?

26 Pages Posted: 20 Feb 2017

See all articles by Richard E. Wagner

Richard E. Wagner

George Mason University - Department of Economics; George Mason University - Mercatus Center

Date Written: February 18, 2017

Abstract

The Keynesian revolution rationalized a divergence between political and economic rationality. Prior to the Keynesian revolution, divergences between political and commercial practice were held in check by moral beliefs to the effect that good conduct for governments was similar to good conduct for families. After the Keynesian revolution, it became widely believed that standards of goodness relevant for families did not apply to governments, for, indeed, government should often act in pursuit of contrary standards. In consequence, the very notion of contract as promise became corrupted through political practice. That corruption was aided by transmutation of the implicit model of economic life latent within the population from that of a structure of production to that of a wheel of income. By corrupting the language of contract as promise, public debt has become a source of societal cancer within a system of liberal democracy, under the presumption that cancers emerge from within the body politic.

Keywords: contract as promise; cooperative vs. monopolistic democracy; formal vs. practical rationality; structure of production; wheel of income; Antonio de Viti de Marco; James Buchanan; Jane Jacobs

JEL Classification: D72, E62, H63, P16

Suggested Citation

Wagner, Richard E., Public Debt and the Corruption of Contract: Can the Keynesian Cancer Be Excised? (February 18, 2017). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 17-05, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2920018 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2920018

Richard E. Wagner (Contact Author)

George Mason University - Department of Economics ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rwagner/

George Mason University - Mercatus Center ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://ppe.mercatus.org/scholars/richard-wagner

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