The Failure of the New Economics
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The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959) is a book by Henry Hazlitt offering a detailed critique of John Maynard Keynes's work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).
Bettina Bien Greaves, in A Man for All Seasons says:
- In Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt demolished various Keynesian programs in a rather low-key manner. Then in 1959, in The Failure of the "New Economics," he critiqued Keynes' major work, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1936) in detail, citing chapter and verse. The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959) is much more scholarly than Economics in One Lesson, its market narrower, but it is by no means less important.
- To refute each Keynesian error, Hazlitt expounded sound economic theory in a way academia couldn't ignore. John Chamberlain, who reviewed the book in The Freeman, titles his review "They'll Never Hear The End of It." The dean of the Department of Economics at a leading university questioned Hazlitt's credentials for critiquing the noted Keynes. Mises came to Hazlitt's defense. Hazlitt, Mises responded, was "one of the outstanding economists of our age," and his anti-Keynes book was "a devastating critique" of the Keynesian doctrines.
Critics of Hazlitt have asserted that he repeatedly fails to understand Keynes properly and also never possessed sufficient mathematical ability to critique Keynes.
