First the quote, and then I’ll tell you where it’s from:

2010 Australian economist Steven Kates defends Say’s Law, and calls Keynesian economics a ‘conceptual disease’.

But before I tell you where it’s from, I will tell you how I found it. I was wandering through the Hill of Content bookshop in Melbourne and looking through the political and economics books when I came across something I had not seen before titled, The Economics Book. Just like that, THE Economics Book, and published by one of my favourite publishers, DK, whose travel books I always get because they specialise in spaced out pages and big print. They also do great kids books but this one was about economic theory.

My first test for any book is to look up “Say’s Law” which wasn’t there but “Say, Jean-Baptiste” was with pages 74-75 darkened. So I popped over to have a look and here I found a section on “Supply Creates Its Own Demand”, Keynes’s dreaded words, but with a more promising subtitle, “Gluts in Markets”. And there to begin the explanation was a four box schematic with arrows, with the first box reading:

People produce commodities and sell them to earn money.

This was a sensationally accurate beginning, something I am not sure I have ever come across before. To understand Say’s Law you must understand that production comes first, then whatever has been produced has to be sold for money and then the money received is used to buy something else.

Incredible, I said to myself, and looked at the back for some bibliographic reference of which there was none. But I did then notice there was an entire section on “Free-Market Economics” under the sensationally accurate heading, “The Invisible Hand of the Market Brings Order” followed by a six page section (pgs 56-61) specifically on “Free-Market Economics”.

It was then that I did something I have never done with any other book before, and I looked at the index, and there, bless my soul, it said, “Kates, Steven 74”! So back to page 74 I went – the section on Say’s Law – and there it was, the words you see above, “Keynesian economics a ‘conceptual disease’”.

Did I really say those words? I must have and you may be sure that they express my view with an accuracy not less than 100%. But fancy someone coming across those words and immortalising them in this wonderful (and it is wonderful) publication. Not only does it delve into economic theory but has long discussions on the history of economics, my other great economic area of deepest interest. It moreover does a wonderful job on economic history which is also extremely important but which is not for me a personal area of expertise.

But having found my own brief mention what occurred to me is how difficult it must have been for the authors to find anyone to say anything negative about Keynes and Keynesian economics. I am editing another book which is a collection of articles criticising Keynesian economic theory and you have no idea how scarce, even now, such articles are. Given the disasters since the Global Financial Crisis, and the harm that Keynesian policies have done, you might think there would be endless papers on this question but the reality is that there are virtually none. Hence they had to come to me for a quote and there I am, so there you are.