Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Apr 4, 2017, adapted to context
Asad Zaman recapitulates: “In chapter 2 of General Theory, Keynes wishes to develop a theory of employment. He claims that classical economics does not have a theory of employment because it assumes that all resources will be fully employed.”
What can be said after 80+ years is that Keynesian employment theory is an abject failure.#1 So, after more than 200 years economists still have no valid employment theory. The ultimate reason is that economists in general and Keynesians is particular are incompetent scientists.#2
Walrasian, Keynesian, Marxian, and Austrian economists are groping in the dark with regard to the two most important features of the market economy, that is, the profit mechanism and the price mechanism. The fault lies in the fact that economists argue from the micro-level upwards to the economy as a whole. And here the Fallacy of Composition regularly slips in. To get out of failed economic theory requires nothing less than a full-blown paradigm shift from accustomed microfoundations to entirely new macrofoundations.
In the following, sketch#3 of the correct employment theory is given. The most elementary version of the objective systemic macroeconomic Employment Law is shown on Wikimedia AXEC62:
From this equation follows:
(i) An increase in the expenditure ratio ρE leads to higher employment (the Greek letter ρ stands for ratio). An expenditure ratio ρE greater than 1 indicates credit expansion, a ratio ρE less than 1 indicates credit contraction.
(ii) Increasing investment expenditures I exert a positive influence on employment, a slowdown of growth does the opposite.
(iii) An increase in the factor cost ratio ρF≡W/PR leads to higher employment.
The complete Employment Law contains in addition profit distribution, public deficit spending, and the trade balance.
Item (i) and (ii) cover Keynes’ well-known arguments about aggregate demand. Here, though, the focus is on the factor cost ratio ρF as defined in (iii). This variable embodies the macroeconomic price mechanism which, however, does NOT work as standard economics claims. As a matter of fact, overall employment INCREASES if the average wage rate W INCREASES relative to average price P and productivity R. This is the opposite of what standard economics teaches.
The objective-systemic Employment Law contains nothing but measurable variables and is therefore readily testable. There is no need for further discussion. As always in science, a test decides the matter.
Right policy depends on true theory: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum, 1991)
Economists do NOT have the true theory. In their scientific incompetence, both orthodox and heterodox economists are ultimately responsible for the enormous social devastations of mass unemployment. Economists are not only fake scientists but a serious hazard to their fellow citizens.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster
#2 Why Post Keynesianism Is Not Yet a Science
#3 For details see Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: Employment
Related 'NAIRU and the scientific incompetence of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy' and 'The set screws of overall and individual employment' and 'Wage rate and employment: the basics' and 'Why is economics a total scientific failure?'. For details of the big picture see cross-references Employment/Phillips Curve.
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JFTR at RWER on Nov 9Clearly, neoliberal policy has NO sound scientific foundations. Orthodox economics is a scientific failure. But, clearly, the same holds for Keynesianism. Both approaches are proto-scientific garbage. See Mass unemployment: The joint failure of orthodox and heterodox economics.