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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (98924)	2/6/2005 12:43:33 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793755

The allegation that homosexuals don't plan for the future strikes me as more pseudo-science masquerading as science. Very few homosexuals have babies. Many more heterosexuals have babies. People who have babies are more apt to plan for the future. If all people without babies plan equally for the future, then the population with people having babies will tip more toward planning for the future. If there is a way to quantify that, I would bet a lot of money on its validity. I don't think we can let students decide what teachers can teach. I don't think this was a left / right thing. If anything I would suspect the student was on the left.

To: Ilaine who wrote (98924)	2/6/2005 4:34:35 PM
From: Bridge Player	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793755

And saying that Keynes' economics were colored by his homosexuality is just plain bizarre. Bizarre? Well, perhaps. glbtq.com u-turn.net mskousen.com mises.org Here is a sample quote from one of these links (there are a lot of others equally useful): << Robert Skidelsky has just completed a three volume biography of Keynes which, incontestably displaces all previous efforts, starting with Harrod’s. The first volume, John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920, was published in 1983. Coming out just before Charles Hession’s 1984 single volume biography, it anticipated Hession’s exploration of Keynes’s homosexuality and its importance for understanding the man’s view of the world. >> I don't know what Hans Hoppe actually said to his class. But here is what the article you read, and were responding to, said about what he said: <<He said there is a belief among some economists that one of the 20th century's most influential economists, John Maynard Keynes, was influenced in his beliefs by his homosexuality.>> Based on a quick cursory review of the links about, it seems to me that Hoppe, simply, spoke a simple truth. As far as his spending/savings theories are concerned: here is another quote from a link above: <<For Keynes the economist, the "abstinence" of people impedes the growth of wealth, and savings are always a potential threat to economic progress. He saw savings as a "leakage," a disharmonizing force which could easily throw the economy into a horrendous depression. The saver was an exploiter, by saving he "forced some other individual to transfer to him some article of wealth." Keynes looked forward to "the euthanasia" of the "functionless investor." In "Possibilities For Our Grandchildren," Keynes contrasts the pathological savers with people who's materialism is sweet and virtuous, for they love money "as a means to the enjoyment and realities of life." It is they who will "teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well." The message is clear: for Keynes, self-denial is bad and self-indulgence is good. That this "immoralist" religious premise undergirds the Keynesian economic theory seems undeniable. For it is the same man, wearing his economist's hat, that tells us that "capital is brought into existence not by the propensity to save" but rather by "prospective consumption." His theories propose that consumption (at least under most circumstances) will actually lead to more capital accumulation, more employment and more prosperity! >> Characterizing this as a "spend it now" philosophy doesn't sound to me too far off the mark.