HES: Re: QUERY--All pre-1936 economists were laissez faireadvocates?

[John Medaille]

Mason Gaffney wrote:
>         Krugman, wearing his journalist hat, was obviously oversimplifying a
>complex business.

Of course these questions are relative and, being 
generalizations, admit of great exceptions. But 
by the standards of  the academic, corporate, and 
bureaucratic elites of the year1900, we are all 
Keynesians now; by the standards of the year 
2000, they were all laissez-faire then.

In 1884, Herbert Spencer in "Man vs. The State" 
railed against government interference in the 
market. Some of the targets of his scorn were the 
Chimney-Sweeper's Act, to prevent the torture and 
eventual death of children set to sweep too 
narrow slots; the Contagious Diseases Act, the 
Public Libraries Act giving local powers "by 
which a majority can tax a minority for their 
books." And so forth, covering a range of 
activities and powers that few today would find remarkable or objectionable.


John C. Medaille