Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

Please don't beat me up too much on this.

Even if their faulty assumption was true, wouldn't that just be a Keynesian approach to solving a recession? I though Keynes approach was that the government should step in a spend more to prevent a recession, essentially equalling what is lost in the free market.

Fully admit could be totally wrong on this. Just curious.

Government spending is how a Keynesian combats a recession. For perspective, though, look at this chart of government spending as a % of GDP. It has never gotten even close to 85% of GDP (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX). Chamath claimed it was 85% of GDP growth, which is a different calculation, but looking at [this data](https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/gdp3q24-adv....) from the past couple of years you can see that the claim is still incorrect.

This is for Q3 of this year, for which the government is saying we're not in a recession.

The problem with Keynesian economics is that no one wants to turn off the money printer when the times are good.

Are we in a recession? I don't think so. There was (still is) a possibility of a recession, due to elevated interest rates, but the way fiscal policy works, through Congress's appropriations, it is hopelessly lagging behind monetary policy (the Fed).

> The problem with Keynesian economics is that no one wants to turn off the money printer when the times are good.

That's what central bank independence is for. Raising interest rates is effectively the same thing.

Besides that it has been turned off for three years:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

But the US population is getting increasingly older so there will be increasing pressure on welfare for them.