Laffing Gas

The Way the World Works By Jude Wanniski Basic, 319 pp., $12.95 Forty-three years ago, John Maynard Keynes announced that he was “writing a book . . . which will largely revolutionize . . . the way the world thinks about economic problems.” His book was The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, and it is safe to say that no book of economics since then has been launched with such bravado or has achieved such influence.

Now Jude Wanniski has launched an anti-Keynesian book, described it as his own “general theory,” and called it, with similar bravado, The Way the World Works. And although this ebullient son of a coal miner might seem an unlikely successor to the urbane dandy of Bloomsbury, Wanniski and his associate Arthur Laffer have achieved an overnight influence of nearly Keynesian proportions.

The Way the World Works By Jude Wanniski Basic, 319 pp., $12.95 Forty-three years ago, John Maynard Keynes announced that he was “writing a book . . . which will largely revolutionize . . . the way the world thinks about economic problems.” His book was The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, and it is safe to say that no book of economics since then has been launched with such bravado or has achieved such influence.

Now Jude Wanniski has launched an anti-Keynesian book, described it as his own “general theory,” and called it, with similar bravado, The Way the World Works. And although this ebullient son of a coal miner might seem an unlikely successor to the urbane dandy of Bloomsbury, Wanniski and his associate Arthur Laffer have achieved an overnight influence of nearly Keynesian proportions.