Additional evidence for independent creation of the multiplier is the distance between Giblin’s macroeconomic views of 1930 and the theoretical structure of the General theory.
It might be ventured that there are eight doctrines that the General theory was especially concerned to defend, and advance:
effective demand (that is, Say’s Law)
the pervasiveness of ‘uncertainty’. To attempt to calculate odds is impossible; we will do better by trusting to animal spirits
a monetary theory of interest
a non-monetary theory of prices in situations of unemployment (that is, the invalidity of the Quantity Theory)
underconsumptionism; the dysfunctionality of thrift
the dysfunctionality of capital and interest income
‘disequilibriumism’: the economic system does not automatically tend to full employment
‘stimulationism’: public works and monetary expansion as the remedy for unemployment, not wage reductions (except in exceptional circumstances).
How much did Giblin’s Australia, 1930 share this ‘larger doctrinal structure’ of 1936? Obviously, the multiplier comprehends the first item, effective demand. But what of the remaining seven doctrines?
There is no hint of either of the pervasiveness of uncertainty or a monetary theory of interest in Giblin.
As for underconsumptionism, Giblin was not an underconsumptionist. In fact, he was an anti-underconsumptionst. Just six weeks after Australia, 1930 he published an article in the Melbourne Herald entitled ‘The Need for Saving’. ‘Saving’ Giblin explained to his readers ‘becomes capital and we need a lot of it in Australia’ He makes his antipathy to consumption quite plain in Australia, 1930.
Three years ago I had the honour of addressing the A[ustralasian] A[association] A[advancement] of S[cience] at Perth on the subject of ‘The Road to Ruin’. I conceived it as paved with the extravagant post-war consumption. The case is even stronger today.
Demand seems no longer bridled by the capacity to pay for the desired commodity. Very striking is the new consumption – in motor-cars, movies and talkies, gramophones, tobacco for women, and the increased expenditure in confectionery, and dress, dancing and travelling.
(It will be recalled that Giblin as a student lived on ‘ships’ biscuits of which he kept a barrel in his rooms’, and in maturity ‘wore red ties of his own manufacture’).
There is nothing of dysfunctionality’ of capital income in Giblin.
Giblin is not a ‘disequilibriumist’. He explicitly states in Australia, 1930 that the system would correct itself through wage adjustments. He made it quite clear that the multiplier would be zero if wages (and other incomes) declined.
Giblin in 1930 was not a stimulationist, either. In Australia, 1930 he was a deflationist. In 1930 he drew no expansionary policy lesson from his multiplier.[22] On the contrary, the policy conclusion he drew was the necessity of a reduction in wages. ‘“Wages Must Fall”: Professor Giblin’s Warning’: this was the headline that the Melbourne Argus chose for its report on Australia, 1930.
Still, for all the distance of his general frame of thought from Keynes’ General theory, Giblin still developed the export multiplier. But even so, we can ask whether he was convinced of its real world significance? In Australia, 1930, after sketching what the concept would imply would be the consequences of an export slump, he asks himself with some perplexity:
Is, then, this appalling result likely to happen, or is the whole argument affected by a fundamental error?
The matter is obscure. (Giblin 1930b).[23]