Terms of Trade: Will the 21st century have a Keynes and Kalecki?

This is the last edition of Terms of Trade for 2024. Thompson’s killing seems like a pre-meditated act to seek retribution for the company’s – United Healthcare is one of the largest health insurance companies in the US – practices of denying health insurance claims, which are bound to have inflicted significant economic misery on customers at a time of most dire personal crisis. “’Full employment capitalism’ will, of course, have to develop new social and political institutions which will reflect the increased power of the working class. If not, it will show itself an outmoded system which must be scrapped”, he adds in his essay, clearly expressing cynicism vis-à-vis Keynes’s inherent optimism in the power of progressive economic ideas to rescue the world from capitalism’s tendency to shoot itself in the foot. On this front, Kalecki’s more dire warnings have not materialised even though businesses continue to push against policies which would strengthen the bargaining power of the working class vis-à-vis capital.