John Maynard Keynes was a Cambridge economist whose writings provided a scientific analysis of economic cycles and showed how these economic cycles could be manipulated. The unemployed were not moral failures; rather, unemployment resulted from impersonal forces at work in the economy, forces that could be countered by state action.
Keynes argued for more government, rather than less. To inflate a depressed economy, Keynes argued that government needed to increase public investment.
Keynes’ ideas, although not embraced during the 193os, became widely accepted after the Second World War.