“Bernie calls himself a socialist, but Bernie is no socialist. He supports private enterprise with regulation, like prosperous Scandinavian countries, and is more of a Keynesian New Dealer.”
It is amazing that one person can show so much misunderstanding in two sentences. The difference between free enterprise and socialism is all in the pricing, not who owns the means of production. If the government sets prices, you soon end up with Venezuela. The graft and thievery is just a side effect. Unregulated prices, Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” has the property of matching production to demand. Putting a short halt in the system—in hours or days, not months or years can allow for control of price spikes without doing much damage. But the problem with socialism comes when no one knows what the clearing price or correct amount of a good to manufacture is. As I said, then you get Venezuela.
As for Keynes, his major lasting contribution to economics was when he stated “In the long run we are all dead.” Don’t get me wrong, Keynes was a competent economist for his day. But the arguments between economists in the middle of the last century are now a dead letter. Why? The arguments were over adjusting the money supply in the absence of good (economic) data. Today The Fed is willing to, and has, adjusted the money supply in the middle of the day due to events in progress.Not only that, but the Fed has adjusted the local money supply in one Fed district due to a regional flood or hurricane.
No one argues with the Fed about those day to day adjustments. (A three day weekend? Inject money on Friday, take it back out on Tuesday. Yawn.) What the politicians argue about is a 1/4 point up or down that affects large industrial and commercial projects. I’m old enough to remember when the Fed started doing 1/4 point adjustments. (I don’t recall the first time the FOMC made a 1/2 change in the discount rate, but I think it was when I was in college.
Reminds me of Richard Feynman’s van: http://www.feynman.com/fun/the-feynman-van/