Hayek vs Keynes rap

It’s pretty cheesy…ok, it’s super-cheesy.  But amid the cheese is a geeky cool that readers will definitely appreciate.  It does in 7 minutes what few university lecturers seem able to do at all, and, best of all, it provides a view of the great economic debate in a way the average non-economist can begin to grasp.

We’re talking of course about the recently released Hayek vs Keynes rap video, Fear the Boom and Bust,  a YouTube video viewed now by over half a million people, made by producer John Papola and economist Russ Roberts, and backed by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.

Jeff Tucker over at Mises.org reckons it’s a great video for what it can potentially do to create among the average citizen a better awareness of economic issues, especially knowledge of and an appreciation for Austrian ideas and the now largely forgotten 1974 Nobel Prize winning genius, Friedrich von Hayek.

Whether this video gets wider distribution and viewership remains to be seen, and whether it has sufficiently deep penetration into the economic consciousness of the man on the street is by no means as clear as perhaps Tucker would like to think.

But, we can certainly agree with Tucker when he says,

A hearty word of congratulations to Russ Roberts and John Papola for putting all this together and providing a fantastic example of how economics can be communicated to every person. It was Mises’s own view that economics should not be relegated to the classrooms but should be part of the study of every citizen.

Indeed.  This 7 minute economic rap video should be watched, enjoyed, appreciated for what it achieves, and passed on to friends and family who need a fun and well structured primer in Keynesian hogwash and Austrian sense.

Our best line of the rap comes right at the culmination of Hayek’s stinging retort to a drunken and hungover Keynes, when he says with all the high-pitched attitude to make a Beastie Boy proud,

Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.

Enjoy.