Below are the lyrics to Fight of the Century, the brilliant second Keynes/Hayek rap video from EconStories. I’ve hyperlinked several of the lines to relevant articles for anyone who wants to explore the ideas and issues raised in the lyrics further. Feel free to make suggestions for further hyperlinking in the comments.
“Fight of the Century” Lyrics.
Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts
KEYNES
Here we are… peace out! great recession
thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression
Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession
HAYEK
We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!
KEYNES
Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…
have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse
HAYEK
Econometricians, they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit
REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round
it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down
KEYNES
We could have done better, had we only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War
You can carp all you want about stats and regression
Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?
HAYEK
Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank
Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew faster
KEYNES
You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero
HAYEK
Creating employment’s a straightforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d have full employment and nothing to eat
REFRAIN REPEATS
HAYEK
jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan
KEYNES
My solution is simple and easy to handle..
its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?
The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
revitalizing the economy’s juices
it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life, we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing
HAYEK
You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, only some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.
The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall
no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.
The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic
REFRAIN REPEATS
KEYNES
so what would you do to help those unemployed?
this is the question you seem to avoid
when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?
Doing nothing until markets equilibrate?
HAYEK
I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for whom?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many, not by the few.
Let’s not repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not a series of bubbles
Stop bailing out loser, let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk
KEYNES
Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations
Challenge your world view of self-regulation?
Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned
HAYEK
Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With those Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve bled
Capitalism’s about profit and loss
you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost
the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,
the world is complex, not some circular flow
the economy’s not a class you can master in college
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge
REFRAIN REPEATS
KEYNES
You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races
I look at the world on a case by case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease
The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
Thats why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression
HAYEK
People aren’t chessmen you move on a board
at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
Those dials you’re twisting… just mirrors and smoke
We need stable rules and real market prices
so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
give us a chance so we can discover
the most valuable ways to serve one another
FINAL REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round
it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down
{ 7 comments }
Great work. A few suggestions:
1) For “general glut,” though the Shostak article is great, a direct link to ‘Say’s Law’ may be warranted. http://www.econlib.org/library/Say/sayT15.html#Bk.I,Ch.XV
2) For “let prices work,” perhaps link to Jonathan Catalán’s Mises Daily Article, “The Foremost Austrian Contribution to Economic Science.” http://mises.org/daily/4924/
3) In the last verses, Hayek’s use of the word “discover” may be a reference to “Competition as a Discovery Procedure.” http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_3_3.pdf
Thanks Michael, I added #3, but I’m going to keep my original links instead of replacing them with 1 and 2, since the original ones are more direct, I think.
This is great. You know some teachers are going to tell their students to look deeper into this video and perhaps write about it. Providing a guide for understanding all the meanings behind the lyrics will be helpful to them. It will also help guide them to the right information.
Other easter eggs:
The two trainers Hayek has are Say and Mises.
The two trainers Keynes has are Hicks and Malthus.
Great work for those interested looking deeper into those topics.
In the spoken prologue before the lyrics begin Keynes mentions “The Road To Serfdom” (a book by Hayek) and Hayek mentions “The End of Laissez Faire” (a essay by Keynes). It might be worthwhile to include them.
Thanks for this post.
Yet as much as I like song and video: in my opinion the presentation of the arguments is not balanced well. Keynes and Hayek both have they’re ups and downs, but in the end Keynes is made look more stupid than serves him well. I would appreciate a more objective view on the issue. As soon as people start arguing with attributes such as “stupid” it’s time to think twice and calm down a little. I say this with particular reference to the “hari of the dog” link I happened to click on. This is not about ideological personal preferences. It’s science.
So, for the teachers and their students: they should now, this is not very objective.
Thanks.
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