Abstract
The 1944 Employment Policy White Paper, which marks the move away from pre-war enthusiasm for the market towards post-war Keynesian intervention, shrugs off the tenets of classical economic theory with condescending disparagement:
It was at one time believed that every trade depression would automatically bring its own corrective, since prices and wages would fall, the fall in prices would bring about an increase in demand, and employment would thus be restored. Experience has shown, however, that... this process of self-recovery, if effective at all, is likely to be extremely prolonged and to be accompanied by widespread distress, particularly in a complex industrial society like our own.
The question steals across the mind whether we are not committing our ... people to tasks beyond their compass, and laying on them burdens beyond their capacity to bear.’—Winston S. Churchill (1943)
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Notes
It is fair to say that they were not so perceived at the time. Some, including Churchill, were unsure whether it was wise or practical to make such commitments. He had warned his Cabinet colleagues on 12 January 1943 against raising false hopes, but a month later (14 February 1943) he was welcoming the Beveridge Report as ‘an essential part of my post-war scheme for national betterment’ in a further minute to the Cabinet. (The Second World War, W. S. Churchill, vol. IV, Cassell, 1951, p. 861.)
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© 1989 Robbie Gilbert
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Gilbert, R. (1989). The Keynesian Era. In: Employment in the 1990s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19726-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19726-2_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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