I don't see this as a republican vs. democrat issue. I cannot speak to Keynesian philosophy. However I can say that government and pharma are in bed with each other. Each side is contributing to the problem and nobody is listening to the people anymore. That was my takeaway from all of this.

I'd like to nominate Garbo's comment below for quote of the month!

L Land, your comment hit the nail on the head!!!
It is the corporations everywhere NOT the Govt. BIG Pharma, BIG Banks, Big media corporations...
What scares me most about the Govt is the fact that many in power would like nothing more than to pull all possible funding that supports people with disabilities. Families in RI in are serious crisis, my son's adult day program has 2 staff person to 15 adults DUE TO MEDICAID CUTS. Any of you out there with son's or daughter with serious Autism want to have your child sit in a group like that most of the day playing bingo, coloring in kindergarten coloring books or walking on a treadmill??? This is ALL that is available in Mass and RI. Is this what you want for your kid? Mine is suffering through this now and it is a nightmare!

Actually, it could not have been put better than here by Americas's most noted Keynseian economist JK Galbraith in 1999 - not that he is making specifically Keynseian point and his article is also intended to as a tribute to the "liberal" economist Robert Heilbroner.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Economics/FreeMarketFraudGalbraith.html

Free Market Fraud
by John Kenneth Galbraith
The Progressive magazine, January 1999

The excellent month I'm called upon for two celebrations-one for the distinguished career of Robert Heilbroner, the most interesting, innovative, and influential of liberal economists, and the other for The Progressive magazine, now ninety years young. I here venture the same theme for both. It is this: Most economists commit what I, in a professionally cautious way, call innocent fraud. It is innocent because most who employ it are without conscious guilt. It is fraud because it is quietly in the service of special interest.
Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes-indeed, deletes-the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.
But most of the people who use the new designation-economists, in particular- are innocent as to the effect. They see nothing wrong with their bland, descriptive terminology. They pay no attention to the important question: Whether money- wealth-accords a special power. (It does.) Thus the term innocent fraud.
The fraud also conceals a major change in the role of money in the modern economy. Money, we once agreed, gave the owner, the capitalist, the controlling power in the enterprise. So it still does in small businesses. But in all large firms the decisive power now lies with a bureaucracy that controls, but does not own, the requisite capital. This bureaucracy is what the business schools teach their students to navigate, and it is where their graduates go. But bureaucratic motivation and power are outside the central subject of economics. We have corporate management, but we do not study its internal dynamics or explain why certain behaviors are rewarded with money and power. These omissions are another manifestation of fraud. Perhaps it is not entirely innocent. It evades the often unpleasant facts of bureaucratic structure, internal competition, personal advancement, and much else.
This innocent or not-so-innocent fraud masks an important factor in the distribution of income: At the highest levels of the corporate bureaucracy, compensation is set by those who receive it. This inescapable fact fits badly into accepted economic theory, so it is put aside. In the textbooks, there is no bureaucratic aspiration, no reward for bureaucratic achievement, no bureaucratic enhancement by merger and acquisition, and no personally established compensation. Bypassing all of this is not a wholly innocent fraud.
A more comprehensive fraud dominates scholarly economic and political thought. That is the presumption of a market economy separate from the state. Most economists concede a stabilizing role to the state, even those who urgently seek an escape from reality by assigning a masterful and benign role to Alan Greenspan and the central bank. And all but the most doctrinaire accept the need for regulation and legal restraint by the state. But few economists take note of the co-optation by private enterprise of what are commonly deemed to be functions of the state. This is hidden by the everyday reference to the public and private sectors, one of our clearest examples of innocent fraud.
Take the common outcry about corporate welfare. Here the private firm, as it is called, receives a public subsidy for its product or service. But what is called corporate welfare is a minor detail. Far more important is the full-fledged takeover by private industry of public decision-making and government spending.
The clearest case is the weapons industry. Given the industry's command of the Congress and the Pentagon, the defense firms create the demand for weaponry prescribe the technological development of our defense system, and supply the needed funds-the defense budget. There is no novelty here. This is the military-industrial complex, a characterization that goes safely back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Any notion of a separation between the public and a private sector-between industry and government-is here plainly ludicrous. Nonetheless, the absorption of public functions by the arms industry is ignored in all everyday and most scholarly economic and political expression. And what is so ignored is in some measure sanctioned. I hesitate here to speak of innocent fraud; it is far from being socially benign.
What we must seek in these matters is reasonably evident. It is the use of plain language to express the clear truth. We can then take pleasure from the discomfort the truth so often evokes.

I personally think that those individuals in government are big boys and girls and are capable of making their own decisions. It is not the fault of "corporations" that the politicians who take an oath to uphold the constitution and defend our country from danger choose corruption over honesty, integrity, and morality. To blame only corporations is simply naive, and ignorant. There are those in office that have never acquiesced to the corruption, but they do not get the press (so to speak)........The corporations are doing what they do to increase the bottom line, and they can simply be denied. This is an issue of individual, personal choice, whether to stand firm and steadfast for the right, or to compromise, however little, and be led down the road to destruction whether it be economic, physiologic, or spiritual.
I agree with the article, and there is a way to beat this without the nanny state, handouts and the like, in fact I am starting a free autism treatment center in the state where I live.

For the past 4 years I have been ubiquitous in my state from the grass roots to the top gov. officer and have figured out a way to make it work. As a physician treating this community and as a father of a recovered child, I will never quit, and I will never depend on gov. to "take care of it". The battle we are in is a battle of good and evil, and advocating anything other than the principles of righteousness is a default to advocate for the opposition (insert own word here). God will not test us beyond what we or our children can take, and if we endure to the end, the very most precious desires of our hearts will be granted. There is no such thing as false hope, they simply cannot co-exist and are diametrically opposed in meaning and principle. I did not make it this far by worrying about what other people, organizations, etc...think, I care only what God thinks, and for what is right. We must press forward, and treat this for what it is, a war between good and evil, no matter what the metaphor we use to describe, educate and clarify with.

Unfortunately, this article hurts the credibility of both the Canary Party and AoA. Keynesian economics is not at all as it is described here.

This isn't the right forum to debate economic policy, of course - so I won't get into it here. If you want to get a better of idea of what it is, and what it isn't, please see Paul Krugman's blog on the NY Times.

Touched a nerve did we?
Good.
Think people.
You are not being "taken care of" by your gov't or your medicine.
Think for yourselves.

Lisa

I think there is something else here and Mary also got near it - that neither medicine or economics can ever be proper sciences so actually some interventions may work but many or most are still unpredictable and essentially out of control. So, I am sure it was worth exploring.

John

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty
John Adams

Neither the government nanny state nor the private sector cowboy state can address the moral difficulties at the heart of this conundrum, alluded to by Von Mises: What in truth, do medical interventions actually accomplish in the body and how does one measure them? Any medical intervention, drug, vaccine, surgery, therapy, test, device, can be shown to have some adverse effect. Statisticians have been well aware of the extreme shortcomings of medical "studies", even those using the "gold" standard, a prospective case/control study. Bias and methodological errors are rife in these studies. The more complex the design, the greater the possibility of deception and subterfuge for profit.
Economics is the science relating to the production and distribution of wealth. It does not make judgments regarding the moral or statistical validity of medical studies, only of the economics of medical products.
Today's New York Times has an editorial by Dr. Gilbert Welch. in it he mentions, favorably, the redefinition of autism in the new DSM, with the associated presumption that if these children weren't diagnosed with autism (or any other condition), that somehow they would act normally or be treated as neurologically normal. The gist of his editorial is that we would all be better off if the medical system only treated the "sick" instead of screening the "well". He believes good nutrition, good exercise and good morals should be left to cookbooks, trainers and clerics. Neither Economics nor Statistics nor Medicine nor Government alone can address the Truth and validity of medical research and it's consequences, that strike to the essence of our nature.

To continue with that metaphor "a rising tide lifts all boats", it only works for good functioning boats, boats that have no leaky hulls, boats that have a functioning captain, boats that have all their rigging in place.

Unfortunately the involvement of government is necessary. The problem is not government. It is the people who run for office who then run the country. It starts with education that would allow a well-run administration to do the right thing. Government and science and education are right now run by corporations which are run by a wealthy faceless number of individuals. To change that we the people have to work to elect the right persons to run the country.

Well written corporate comment Jenna.

The "little people" of the USA are expected to pull on their bootstraps and lift themselves out of a two trillion dollar banking/ mortgage fraud.

Thank goodness we know Wall Street is looking after our retirement funds with 1.5 billion dollar salaries for hedge fund managers...

Many now cannot buy a house, you can't sell your house and move until the "banks sell the empty houses on your street" before they will give someone a loan to buy yours...

Add that to the three trillion dollars that pharma owes the Autism community...

Get ready for 7 billion dollars worth of campaign commercials to elect more of the same.

Somewhat over 20 years ago a friend was working in a great art museum. Her immediate boss was offered a gigantic salary as the director of an auction house, and he had to make a simple choice. Would he take the money or try to fulfill his ambition to become the head of a great museum (which indeed he now is). Would the same rules apply in the art world now? I have no idea, but the basic concept of conflicted interest was fully accepted - you just did one thing or the other. If you went into the commercial end of the art world you could never get back again. This, of course, did not mean that there was no possibility of corruption, but at least there were sensible ground rules, and amongst public servants a concept of honour.

And, of course, while it is very valuable to have art curators that work in the public interest, even if there were corruption it would not be anything like as serious as what happens in the fields of health, defence, IT or finance now. In some of these areas it has possibly always been bad but the projects seem to get ever more out of hand, the revolving door syndrome more acute, the follies of officials greater.

Where we are at may be something like the days before the French Revolution with state and the populace ever more weighed down by paying for franchises, privileges etc

Of course, the problem of acquiring bad debts has also been with us as long as capitalism - I think of 'The Merchant of Venice' (1590s), South Sea bubble 1720.

We never seem to learn enough for long enough.

Well, be careful.

I was raised in the grand tradition of Ayn Rand laissez faire capitalism, and all the friends (and family members) I still have in that camp come down on the side of doing nothing for our kids.

They think that "private charity" will bring in the dollars and resources necessary for our kids. They believe in getting rid of the DOE and all government regulation pertaining to education, including IDEA. They believe that the private medical insurance industry and pharma can be left to regulate themselves. I once ascribed to these ideas too, but now believe that corporatism is the real evil, not government per se. Our government is run by large corporations, so the government agenda is actually the corporate agenda. I no longer want government out of my life, I want a government free of corporate influence, with reasonable regulation. The key to getting this is to get money out of politics—without money there is no influence.

Sorry, Lisa but disagree with you. It is corporate greed coupled by the ineptitude of government administrators that is causing all this. Free markets would bring us the same if not worse. Yes, government should have no business in telling us to vaccinate or not but it is because the huge pressure from pharma that they keep adding more and more vaccines. It is because big pharma that states are enacting stricter laws, it is because of big pharma that the good science is hard to come by. Their influence permeates every aspect of our lives. Look at the Europeans, they are doing much better and they have more government not less but companies have less influence than they do here.

You're right on point. Excellent essay!

When my son was DXed with ASD it was like a rerun of a Big Lie I had been told all my life about adoption. Losing your parents doesn't matter. We deserve to have a child because we were infertile and are 'ready' for a child. Any child. You are better off. Your curiosity about your own history makes me feel bad, so don't talk about it, okay?

Adoptees do not suffer more problems than the non-adopted (because there is NO problem, remember?) because the statistics of adopted children who are drug abusers, depressed, have eating disorders and fill residential treatment centers and juvenile halls are just coincidence! All is well. When adoption attorneys and 'non-profit' agencies stand to make 30-50K per infant, there is incentive to create demand. Yes, growing up in the pretend land that is adoption helped me realize that the rancid *smell* of the vaccine/autism connection was not my imagination.

Blindly going against nature is almost always a bad idea. And while the profound damage may not be readily apparent, it is obvious to those brave enough to connect the dots down the road.

Ludwig had a brother, Richard von Mises, statistician. From "Probability, Statistics and Truth" (originally published, 1928), "The picture which I have drawn of the possibilities and results of statistical methods would be incomplete were I not also to say a few words on the erroneous and sometimes senseless theories which have been propounded in the name of statistics. Unfortunately, the number of such mistakes has been quite large, especially in medical literature. They are valuable as examples of the danger involved in each deviation from the firm principles of the theory of probability. In nearly all cases of this kind it is possible to recognize the source of error simply by inquiring a little more closely into the nature of the collectives to which the calculated distributions are supposed to correspond. I will discuss one example in some detail, because it has been published with the authority not only of a celebrated psychiatrist, but also of a well-known mathematician."
I have not researched the subject, but I believe Ricard profoundly influenced the development of Ludwig's economic theories.

Fabulous! Just Loved it.

MOST EXCELLENT!