Rod Hay, in reacting to Steve Kate's reference to Hayek's comment,   
wrote: "This of course, is based on a deliberate misreading of Keynes.   
Keynes was arguing against the laissez-faire policy proposals for   
dealing with extreme economic conditions like the great depression. 'In   
the long run the economy may correct itself. But we cannot afford to   
wait. Because by then we will be dead.' is how I read his comment."   
  
Not quite accurate.  First, Keynes's statement in his 1923 book, A    
Tract on Monetary Reform.  There he was claiming that the classical   
economists hadn't provided explanations for short-term economic   
disturbances or fluctuations.   Thus, he argued that telling someone   
during a period of stormy seas that the waves would calm down in the   
long run is of little use.  But of course, Keynes was wrong.  All he   
needed to have done was to read the classical forced-saving doctrine as   
a short run companion of the quantity theory of money (from Hume,   
Bentham, Thornton, Ricardo, J.S. Mill, and Marshall), and without   
claiming that it assumes full employment, to find what he thought was   
missing from the classics.  
  
Second, the really misleading aspect of his famous comment is that in   
the monetary long run there are more people alive than have died since   
the initiation of a monetary action.  Thus, for example, increasing the   
rate of money creation may lower interest rates and increase real output   
and employment in the short term.  But sooner or later, interest rates   
would rise (back to their initial level or even above them), employment   
would contract to its initial level (at best), and the rate of inflation   
would rise.  David Ricardo was willing to suggest that the long-run   
consequences for interest rates would begin even in six months!  These   
are the long run effects the classics emphasized with respect to   
monetary increases.  The reverse is also true with respect to monetary   
contraction.  That each of us will die some day ("in the long run") is   
completely irrelevant to the classical monetary analysis Keynes was   
criticizing.   
  
James Ahiakpor