"We are all Keynesians now" is a famous phrase attributed to Milton Friedman and later rephrased by

U.S. president The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

. It is popularly associated with the reluctant embrace in a time of financial crisis of

Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output ...

by individuals such as Nixon who had formerly favored less interventionist policies.

History and variations

Carl Turner in his 1969 book cites a Russian article by I.G. Blyumin from 1947, referring to what was already the 'famous remark'. The phrase was later attributed to Milton Friedman in the December 31, 1965, edition of ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' magazine. In the February 4, 1966, edition, Friedman wrote a letter clarifying that his original statement had been "In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian". Friedman's expression was purportedly a rejoinder to the 1888 claim of British politician William Vernon Harcourt that "We are all socialists now"; a declaration that was reprinted for a

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magazine cover story in 2009. In 1971, after taking the United States off the

Bretton Woods system The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretto ...

, Nixon was quoted as saying he was "now a Keynesian in economics", which became popularly associated with Friedman's phrase. In 2002,

Peter Mandelson Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as First Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010. He was President of the Board of Trade in 1998 and from 2008 to 2010. He is the ...

wrote an article in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its s ...

'' declaring "we are all Thatcherites now", referring to the acceptance among the other political parties of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. The phrase gained new life in the midst of the

global financial crisis of 2008 Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

, when economists called for massive investment in infrastructure and job creation as a means of economic stimulation.

References

American political catchphrases Keynesian economics Presidency of Richard Nixon Milton Friedman Works originally published in Time (magazine) 1965 neologisms {{Econ-theory-stub