Weekly Thought Evaluations (WTEs) # 6

Weekly Thought Evaluations (WTEs). Each week, the instructor will ask for a 3-5 page paper on the current week’s topic. The content of the paper will respond to the topic by including a summary of the relevant chapter and/or readings and an application of that chapter material to the topic.

WTE 5

Please prepare a 3-5 page paper in response to this narrative and upload as indicated.

Thomas Malthus argued that capitalism was unstable due to booms and busts in the economy, and so he wanted to see more of society’s surplus go to the landlord class. 

1. To what extent is Malthus’s view similar to and/or different from that of John Maynard Keynes, who argued in his General Theory that “animal spirits” motivated profit expectations and were associated with volatility in capital markets and hence with chronic and periodic unemployment of factors of production?

2. How was Malthus’s view different from Keynes?  How was the period during which he was writing affect this comparison?  Does his feeling that the landed aristocracy should be promoted also affect this comparison?