Keynes made no such distinctions. Drawing on intuition, observation and his own broad experience, he concluded that the nation found itself stuck in the 1930s Depression in large part because business refused to invest, although the nation offered plenty of savings to finance investment. Keynes' sweeping insight forever changed the way economists think about the way a capitalist system functions. Keynes, having found the problem, saw no reason to be shy about solutions, calling for enormous government spending to offset the decline in business investment. And he tried to save society from itself.
Modern economists reject such a role.
Romer's father, Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado, had to decide while in office whether to cut taxes or spend more on education, a value judgment properly left to politicians, in the son's view. I have sought to be as skilled on the scientific side. The father chose more education, partly on the advice of his son, who told him of the economic profession's scientific finding that income inequality is a result of unequal education. But in this sort of a case, science does not take you far enough, says Heilbroner, an economic historian at the New School for Social Research. You have to ask, what is the correlation between high levels of education and high levels of wealth.