The best and the brightest

If the original Keynesian models had been presented with multipliers of less than 2, would anyone have paid attention to them? The attraction of the Keynesian model was that a small government action could have a big result.

Arthur Kling points out the multipliers decrease as fiscal policy gets larger and eventually turn negative. He also doubts whether the best and the brightest always know what they are doing.

Right now, the typical academic cannot imagine Obama's team doing anything stupid. The upper class in Britain felt the same way about its generals in 1916.