What did he mean by this?

>>2165629

Here's the full quote so you get the context:

>The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.

He was saying it isn't very helpful to disregard current economic problems as mere fluctuations because those are exactly the problems economists need to figure out if they're going to be of any use at all. By analogy you would be a pretty shit doctor if your response to each sick patient was "that's just a temporary fluctuation, you'll be dead within a hundred years and then it won't matter."

Taken out of context, that quote is usually brought up to lead you to believe he only cared about short term gains and was OK with fucking over the future to get them.

>>2166368
>Taken out of context, that quote is usually brought up to lead you to believe he only cared about short term gains and was OK with fucking over the future to get them.
Well, he did.

>>2165629
>dude nothing mattress xD

So sick of this bullshit.

>>2166431

No, he didn't.

>>2166439
if you don't have children there's no special reason to care for the future of mankind and of society (unless you are obsessed by pointless worryings)

>>2167642
that's bullshit

>>2165629
idk why don't you go ask him what he meant

oh wait

>>2165629
>DUDE LETS JUST IGNORE CLASSICAL ECONOMICS WITHOUT EVER ARGUING ITS MERITS XDDDDDD

He means that don't think too hard about the true consequences of what you are doing, because you won't be around to see them. You just have to trick people into thinking you are doing something that will work.

Yes, Keynesianism is the most dishonest set of economic ideas, even surpassing Marxian economics.

>>2168400
threaten me with punishments in an afterlife and if i weren't aware that there is no evidence of that i'd be scared enough to start caring for what will happen to those future generations who will be unable to retaliate against our silent bones

>>2166368
>>2166445
He did.

Battening down the hatches doesn't influence the weather, however goverment policies do. If a recession is not overwhelmingly due to lack of aggregate demand excessive spending for the sake of it will only create a bubble.