J. B. Say on Unemployment and Public Works

Part of a Symposium entitled, "Say's Law Revisited," this note is dedicated to showing that both Say's and Ricardo's concerns about unemployment were deeper than even the Kates article (in this symposium) suggests, that this concern even led Say to advocate a clear Keynesian remedy for unemployment: public works. Correspondingly, the paper shows that Ricardo's disquiet about joblessness constitutes a good part of his reversal on the role of machinery (i.e., innovation) that so distressed his adherents.