Most of Keynes' arguments on money are equally circular.

The Keynsian canon is absurd, but so too is the belief, widely held on Wall Street, that one agency of the government buying another agency's debt with created-from-thin-air money leads to economic growth. Simply stating that no entity can continuously consume more than it produces will automatically disqualify an economist from consideration for a Nobel prize or tenure at leading institutions, such is the sad state of mainstream, contemporary economics.

A good example is base line budgeting. A little trick the government has been pulling for lo, these many years. It is actually a simplistic con game that past trust has allowed government to get away with. When we are told that we have cut the budget in any given area, by say, 15% or that we are no longer funding a certain part of the budget, what you're not being told is that the figures you are getting are those which are over the base line. What is the base line? That's the amount spent on that item in the last budget.
So -- it works like this: Last year we spent $150 (million-billion it doesn't matter). This year we had a decrease of 50% to 75. But what they fail to mention is that they retain a "base line" of 150, so that this year's budget is actually 150 + 75, or 225. Not a decrease, but an increase! No matter what you call it, it's a lie. They all know it, regardless of party, philosophy, or ethical pronouncements. But, wait! If that is true, what other folderol is the government feeding us? Not being a denizen of the labyrinth called Washington, I couldn't begin to tell you. As of now, our government rests its firm foundation of economic stability on.....nothing at all. It's an upside down pyramid and most of us are going to get squashed when it falls.

And yet slightly more complex deceptions are held-fast beliefs. My parents taught me that common sense is anything but common. Many people believe lies just like the great picture above. Politicians bribe for votes based on this lie.
Sound money would have normally exposed these lies. A rumbling tummy would push some one to make money rather than demand it of others.
But they get away with it, for a time.....

I have worked in the IT industry for a number of years. I had a client several years ago that did this and tried to run her computer. Do not think I ever got her to understand why this wouldn't work. She was a 1st grade school teacher so maybe that had something to do with it.

we get these clients in occasionally and have to keep straight faces

I Can fill my pool up by taking water from the deep end and pouring it in the shallow one... :)

I know if I pull on my own boots hard enough I'll begin to levitate...

Simple, circular, irrational and unusually progressive.
A, with enough public debt you can get public gains, kind of guy.

We see it as pouring some water that's already been pumped upward down into the mechanism.
http://www.pumpfundamentals.com/images/s...
I know it's easy for statists to exploit, either to prop up failing industries and/or wrongly to justify deficit spending.

Keynes argued that government spending could be used to directly increase means of production. Clearly, this worked in World War II America and the subsequent post-war boom. Keynes was horrified at other aspects of the Roosevelt administration's policies as he would be today by the liberal idea that "any government spending" stimulates the economy.

Karl Marx used that "logic" too.

That's a good one. Thanks