The General Theory of Interest, Employment, and Money
Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations Keynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money Ben Bernanke - Essays on the Great Depression Robert Shiller - Irrational Exuberance Levitt and Dubner - Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, fast and slow
You are invoking the famous, often-misunderstood fiscal policy outlined by Keynes. Here is the often-paraphrased text from The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money Book 3 Ch.10 Section VI [1]: "Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better...If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise…
> Beyond the intrinsic difficulty of revivifying the top-hatted dead, Sorkin’s rendition is limited by his desire to frame 1929 as a story about people. His focus on individuals comes at the expense of analysis—particularly of the deeper economic forces that made the crash likely, if not inevitable. Sorkin is more interested in how the crisis felt than why it happened. He has little to say about why the government failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent it—or why, unlike in 2008, its responses failed so spectacularly. Sigh. This reviewer, Jacob Weisberg, is sadly either unfamiliar…
Definitely You should read "The general theory of employment, interest and money" by John Maynard Keynes. And from the other side of the economic spectrum try: "Free to choose" by Milton Friedman. Probably, you should also pick: "This time is different" by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart.
I would definitely recommend starting with some other text. I agree with everything you said about its turgidity. However, I really think people should make their way through it anyway. Part of this is because most intro textbooks seem to gloss over it: I remember suddenly finding myself studying aggregate supply and aggregate demand in my intro macro course, and thinking "Wait...this doesn't make any sense. It's not at all like the equilibrium models we were just doing. And it directly contradicts what we were just taught about the interest rate being the equilibrium price in the…
Grab a good textbook or two. I learned mostly from Paul Samuelson for microeconomics and Gregory Mankiw for macroeconomics. Other good sources: Benjamin Graham's investing books, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway letters from the chairman. If you want to understand anything about Keynesianism, I'd suggest reading the original Keynes (The General Theory of Interest, Employment, and Money); almost everyone who writes stuff about Keynesianism on the net doesn't understand it. I'd be skeptical of almost every easily-understandable article you read on the net. They always seem to fall into…
I confess that I still haven't read all of General Theory (it's sitting on my to-finish bookshelf), but I really found it quite turgid and wouldn't recommend it to anyone without some economics background (not least because it'll put you to sleep). Besides, most of the standard formulations of Keynes' work were done by other people, eg. Hicks-Hansen put together the IS-LM model based on Keynes ramblings. On a scale of turgidity, the General Theory is on a par with "The Road to Serfdom" by Keynes' contemporary nemesis Friedrich von Hayek. I willed my way through that one, but a 10 page…
Reading: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by Keynes. Studying: The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al and Advanced Macroeconomics by Romer.