Beyond the Monetarists: Post-Keynesian Alternatives to Rampant Inflation, Low Growth and High Unemployment

Kenneth M. Glazier was Chief Librarian Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

When you pick up a book with such well-known contributors as John Kenneth Galbraith, David Crane, Tom Kent, and Ian Stewart, you have a right to expect a lot. You will not be disappointed with this volume. Conference papers are often boring, but somehow editor David Crane, economist of the Toronto Star, has managed to breathe life into a pertinent issue, “the alternative to monetarism.” This subject has been heralded as the panacea of our time in the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It takes John Kenneth Galbraith, a master of words and ideas, to warn us of the danger of this new conservatism, which is trying to dismantle the consensus that has held western societies together during the post-war period. That consensus had three principal parts: the responsibility of government to manage the economy and minimize inflation and unemployment; the need for government to provide services not adequately provided by the private sector, such as moderate-cost housing, health care, and public transportation; and the need to provide a social safety net to protect the individual from circumstances beyond his control — for example, environmental protection, old-age pensions, medicare, and job security. All of these benefits are now threatened by the new monitorial-conservative approach, which is to take away the social benefits won for the ordinary citizen through the State.

This treatise is worth reading. At least it presents the problem in perspective; solutions are more difficult.