“The Battle of Ideas” John Maynard Keynes & Friedrich von Hayek - II

The history of economic thought is a juggernaut of blueprints penned by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Lenin, Keynes, Hayek, Ricardo, Mill and many pundits who developed unparalleled thoughts throughout the centuries Britain's mixed economy, so widely imitated, was in similar trouble. It, too, was facing the deadly combination of unemployment and inflation. Margaret Thatcher had a gut instinct for market economics. While she was at Oxford, she read Hayek's Road to Serfdom. It made a lasting impression on her. Years later, when she became the first woman to lead the Conservative Party, she once slammed Hayek's book down on a table and announced, “This is what we believe.” By 1974, Hayek sensed the world beginning to go his way. Hayek (interviewed in 1978): As for the movement of intellectual opinion is concerned, it is now for the first time in my life moving in the right direction. Interviewed in 1993, she said that the spirit of enterprise had been sat upon for years by socialism, by too-high taxes, by too-high regulation, by too-public expenditure. The philosophy was nationalization, centralization, control, regulation. Now this had to end. Reagan in his campaign said, Vote for me, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in your right to control your own destiny and plan your own life, yes, and have a say in the spending of your own money. The president is going to have more government on the backs of the people and of business and of industry, the working people, in order to try to solve the problems that were created by too much government on our backs. We can get government off our backs, out of our pockets. This kind of indifference to economic disaster must be ended, and it'll be ended by having a different kind of leadership. Governments everywhere would retreat from the commanding heights of their economies. In the battle of ideas, the pendulum had swung from government to market, from Keynes to Hayek.
See lecture here or https://www.academia.edu/12547386/_The_Battle_of_Ideas_John_Maynard_Keynes_and_Friedrich_von_Hayek_Part_II