By use of government deficit spending and manipulation of interest rates through control of the money supply, government planners could influence the demand for goods and services and the amount of private investment activity. And every one has turned into disaster. Central planning has twisted men's souls and ravaged their bodies. Both communist and fascist forms of planning have denied human beings their most basic freedoms and produced nothing but poverty and terror. And while Keynesian economics and neo-mercantilist trade policies have appeared less visibly destructive of freedom and prosperity, their effects have been no less detrimental.
Governmental regulations intrude into every comer of economic life.
Government determines who can work and under what conditions, how products may be produced and in what manner they may be marketed, what kind of profits may be earned, and what level of wages must be paid. The post-World War II period has seen nothing but unending cycles of booms and busts, inflations and recessions. And with every enlargement in the size of government has come an increased number of groups in the society dependent upon the continuation of governmental spending and protection. The corruption of our legislative processes is merely me aspect of the political consequences of Keynesian economics put into practice. During the first half of this century, many economists and political philosophers were drunk with the idea of power.