This paper focuses on two books that Robert Heilbroner wrote with Peter Bernstein on public finance – A Primer on Government Spending (1963) and The Debt and the Deficit (1989). It also discusses how the economic world changed between the early 1960s and the late 1980s, and how these changes...

This paper reestablishes Hayek's assertion that buying a new overcoat will reduce output and unemployment. It is because the spending is like pulling rice plants to help them grow: it simply kills the plants. The proper way to encourage more output, and hence to enjoy more consumption, is by...