Keynes in Dublin: Exploring the 1933 Finlay Lecture
The story behind a lecture given by economist John Maynard Keynes in Dublin in 1933 makes interesting and timely reading. Keynes was “beyond any doubt, the most influential political economist of the second quarter of the 20th century,” according to author Mark Nolan,
Instead of spending money on unemployment, Keynes advocated that people should be employed to do constructive work. “If I had responsibility for the Government of Ireland today, I should most deliberately set out to make Dublin, with its appropriate limits of scale, a splendid city fully endowed with all the appurtenances of art and civilisation on the highest standards,” he argued. Spending money in this way was not only better than dole, but could actually eliminate the need for dole.
