Keynesian Economics kept Australia out of recession in 08. They literally gave everyone 800 bucks. It was awesome, went out a bit more, bought lots of takeout and a few bits for around the house. And the economy kept moving.

Now if only i could figure out a way to get more people to live in my SIM tower!

Yeah, I'm sure that mining boom had nothing to do with it...

Why stop at 800?

Give everyone a million bucks and you'd have a booming economy.

That's a bit of a lame argument, along the same lines as the 'trickle down' effect.

It probably depends on whether your economy is limited by consumer demand or by insufficient investments. For most developed nations it is clearly limited by consumer demand. Giving rich people more money aka 'trickle down' won't get the rich people to invest, because there is no demand (normal people already spend more than 100% of their income)

In this situation giving away money helicopter style makes sense.

What are the competing theories? The most common one is "WWII", which is another way of saying "Keynesian Economics"

There's a ton of competing theories that like to point out that previous depressions lasted a year or two while the Great Depression went on and on because of all the government interventions that prevented the economy from being able to recover.

Luck and variance are pretty good explanations, though people tend to hate them. The idea that every thing in the universe has to have a specific cause and effect plagues a lot of "analysis" in today's world. We simply aren't built for accepting luck.

Bernanke on the lessons learned: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke201...