Economics professor Emily Skarbeck here compares the wisdom of Adam Smith with the utter folly of Keynesian thinking. Smith argued that government should leave people alone and then they’d work, save, and invest to produce the maximum amount of goods and services desired by people. Keynes argued that government planners had to control “the economy” and decide how to invest.

The only reason why humans (some of them, anyway) have managed to escape from poverty is that they took Smith’s advice — for a while. It’s quite possible, however, for people to retrogress by consuming their capital, depressing incentives to work and save, and wasting resources on foolish political projects. That’s exactly what the US has been doing for decades and the pace of our descent is increasing.