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The central argument of The General Theory is that the level of employment is determined not by the price of labour, as in classical economics, but by the level of aggregate demand. If the total demand for goods at full employment is less than the total output, then the economy has to contract until equality is achieved.
Thus, full employment of labor corresponds to potential output. Whilst full employment is often an aim for an economy, most economists see it as more beneficial to have some level of unemployment, especially of the frictional sort. In theory, this keeps the labor market flexible, allowing room for new innovations and investment.
The result, as Hicks points out, is the false impression that Keynes assumed wages to be constant at any level of employment short of full employment. [33] He claimed that "Hicks' procedure is completely unnecessary". Keynes explicitly declares wages to be exogenous on p247.
The ergodic axiom asserts that the future of the economy can be predicted based on the past and present market conditions. Without the ergodic assumption, agents are unable to form rational expectations, undermining new classical theory. [220] In a non-ergodic economy, predictions are very hard to make and decision-making is hampered by ...
Keynes interprets the relation between output and employment as a causative relation between effective demand and employment. He discusses what happens at full employment [16] concluding that wages and prices will rise in proportion to any additional expenditure leaving the real economy unchanged. The money supply remains constant in wage units ...
In regards to employment, the condition referred to by Keynes as the "first postulate of classical economics" stated that the wage is equal to the marginal product, which is a direct application of the marginalist principles developed during the nineteenth century (see The General Theory). Keynes sought to supplant all three aspects of the ...
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An early example was Jacob Viner, who in his 1936 review of the General Theory said of hoarding that Keynes' attaches great importance to it as a barrier to "full" employment' (p152) while denying (pp158f) that it was capable of having that effect. [39] The theory that hoarding is a cause of unemployment has been the subject of discussion.