Quote from piezoe:
Well to be fair to Keynes it seems most countries can't muster the fiscal discipline later on to really apply Keynes in the way he intended. It's easy to open the spigot, hard to close it.
Keynes advocated either raising taxes or cutting government expenditures during boom times as well as deficit spending during recessions. We are great at the second part of his cure, but once we start feeling better we are awful at completing the full course of the treatment. It's like the patient with a bacterial infection that is supposed to take antibiotics for two weeks but stops after three days because they feel much better.
The other thing to keep in mind with regard to Keynes is that his ideas were developed during the time that currencies were backed by hard assets. I would think a world of fiat currencies might have altered his thinking.