Friedrich Hayek - Le Combat du Siècle (second round) [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

[Intro]

John Maynard Keynes
F. A. Hayek
Round Two. Round 2.0
Same economists. Same beliefs. New microphones
New Mustaches. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go

[Couplet 1]

KEYNES:

Here we are. Peace out, Great Recession
Thanks to me – as you see – we’re not in a depression
Recovery. Destiny. If you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes. Here I come. Line up for the procession

HAYEK:

We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch
And still digging. Don’t you think it’s time for a switch
From that hair of the dog? Friend the party is over
The long run is here, it’s time to get sober

KEYNES:

Are you kidding? My cure works perfectly fine
Have a look, the Great Recession ended back in ’09
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it. I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK:

"Econometricians", they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their Keynesian models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

[Refrain]

Which way should we choose?
More bottom-up or more top-down?
The fight continues
Keynes and Hayek second round
It’s time to weigh in
More from the top or from the ground?
Let’s listen to the basics
Keynes and Hayek throwin’ down

[Couplet 2]

KEYNES:

We could have done better had only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a world war
You can carp all you want about stats and regressions
Do you deny that world war cut short the Depression?

HAYEK:

Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
The last time I checked wars only destroy
There was no multiplier. Consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank
Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Ration meat. Ration butter. A life of austerity
When that war spending ended, your friends cried disaster
Yet, the economy thrived and grew faster

KEYNES:

You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master. That’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK:

Creating employment is a straight forward craft
When the nation’s at war and there’s a draft
If every worker were staffed in the army and fleet
We’d have full employment and nothing to eat

[Refrain]

[Couplet 3]

HAYEK:

Jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves
People work to live better, to put food on the shelves
Real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship, not your central plan

KEYNES:

My solution is simple and easy to handle
It’s spending that matters. Why’s that such a scandal?
Money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
Revitalizing the economy’s juices
It’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Were it goes doesn’t matter. Just Get Spending Flowing

HAYEK:

You see slack in some sectors as a general glut
But some sectors are healthy only some are in a rut
So spending’s not free, that’s the heart of the matter
Too much is wasted as cronies get fatter
The economy’s not a car. There’s no engine to stall
No expert can fix it. There’s no “it” at all
The economy is us. We don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy is organic

[Refrain]

[Couplet 4]

KEYNES:

So what would you do to help those unemployed?
This is the question you seem to avoid
When we’re in a mess, would you have us just wait
Doing nothing until markets equilibrate?

HAYEK:

I don’t wanna do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for whom
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many, not by the few
Let’s not repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not a series of bubbles
Stop bailing out losers, let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES:

Come on are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street gyrations
Challenge your world view of self regulation?
Even you must admit that lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight is needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK:

Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With those Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve bled
Capitalism is about profit and loss
You bail out the losers there is no end to the cost
The lesson I’ve learned is how little we know
The world is complex, not some circular flow
The economy is not a class you master in college
To think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

[Refrain]

[Couplet 5]

KEYNES:

You’ve get on your high horse and you are off to the races
I look at the world on a case-by-case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease
The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
That’s why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK:

People aren’t chess men you move on a board
At your whim, their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
Those dials are twisting; just mirrors and smoke
We need stable rules and real market prices
So prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
Give us a chance so we can discover
The most valuable ways to serve one another

Paroles rédigées et expliquées par la communauté RapGenius France