"Economist Michal Kalecki's amazingly correct prediction"

Lifted in toto from the Mike Norman Economics blog:

Most people know Polish economist Michal Kalecki for his "profit equation," which looks like this:

This simply stated that business profits were equal to the sum of capitalist consumption, investment, government deficits and net exports, minus worker savings.

Kalecki was a contemporary of Keynes and a supporter of his economic views, particulary, that government has the power to establish and maintain full employment via deficit spending.

But Kalecki believed that full employment would never be achieved and he gave his reason why in an article he published entitled, "Political Aspects of Full Employment." Basically, Kalecki said that the full employment delivered by Keynesian policy would eventually lead to a more assertive working class and weakening of the social position of business leaders, causing the elite to use their political power to force the displacement of the Keynesian policy even though profits would be higher than under a laissez faire system: The erosion of social prestige and political power would be unacceptable to the elites despite higher profits.

Boy, was he right!!! 

The comments are also worth a gander.