Thank you for such a well-referenced exposition. Mostly it endorsed my own surmises, except for one significant item.

I think the ‘neoliberal’ opposition to tax increases as an end in itself created the “failure” of Keynes’s paradigm. He made it perfectly clear that, after the collapse of the laissez-faire capitalist system in the Great Depression, to optimize the functioning of the economy there would be times when taxes should be cut and other times when taxes should be raised.

It was clear by the end of the 1960’s that taxes needed to be raised, and they were, but by too little by the time they were increased and then not at all. That allowed inflation to increase to a point at which Volcker’s induced recession was the only option (and that, to his credit, President Carter appointed Volcker to do, knowing it would probably cost him any chance at reelection). With that, we went from ‘tax-and-spend’ liberalism to ‘borrow-and-spend’ neoliberalism: much better for the financial sector of the economy — and big corporations that could play in that field — and wealthy people.