Comment of the Day: : The "Structural Problems" Ideology is not Superstructure.: "Brad DeLong notes that Friedman has few disciples and that Hayek has many...
...in spite of the utter failure of Hayekian macro theory to fit any fact. He blames... the benevolent Kindlebergian hegemon[y] of the United States [which] took on the task of maintaining a stable level of aggregate demand in the North Atlantic as a whole. With the possibility of large hemisphere-wide demand shortfalls ruled out, it made intellectual, pragmatic, and policy sense to focus on the 'structural'....
This is both patronizing and too kind. First, most US economists have never worked at the Fed or the Treasury.... More importantly, there was a massive prolonged European demand shortfall from the late 70s through the early 90s.... The focus on the "structural" is free-floating ideology, not a superstructure carried on the patient back of any hegemon.... French and German technocrats can ignore aggregate demand, because they have learned to ignore double digit unemployment, not because the USA benevolently hegemonically prevented it. A German wrote 'only the rational is real' before a German wrote 'only the real is rational'. Both were fact resistant ideologues. Neither Hegel nor Marx has many more disciples than Friedman, but Brad DeLong won't quite give up on the Marxist faith that ideology must have some basis in someone's material interests somehow.
