Book Club Discussion - A Rehabilitation of Say's Law

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A Rehabilitation of Say's Law by W. H. Hutt

This short book was originally intended to be a chapter in Hutt’s longer work ‘The Keynesian Episode’ but was published separately.

With A Rehabilitation of Say's Law, Professor William H. Hutt produced a magnificent work that Austrians would love to claim as one of their own, but that Hutt himself viewed as thoroughly classical in nature. The topic addressed here is Say's law: the view that macroeconomic activity tends toward stability — which is to say, under a free market there will be no systemic gluts or shortages absent government intervention.

J.M. Keynes considered the foundation of his own work his refutation of Say's law, for which (according to Hutt) he coined the phrase "supply creates its own demand." Hutt formulates the law, which he says is fundamental to all economic thinking, that "all power to demand is derived from production and supply." Hutt argues that there is no inherent flaw in the market that leads it to provide a deficiency in aggregate demand, contrary to what Keynes claimed.

Hutt's argument is that Say's law must be completely restored before the root of the Keynesian error can be seen and understood.