Keynes on prosperity and the Great Depression

For the moment the very rapidity of these changes is hurting us and bringing difficult problems to solve. Those countries are suffering relatively which are not in the vanguard of progress. We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come–namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.

Alexander Field, the economic historian, would one day argue much the same, with numbers behind it.  For Keynes even the Great Depression wasn't just an AD problem.  (Obama worries too.)

From Keynes, here is 7 pp. more, fascinating throughout, although mostly totally wrong and there is a naughty mention at the bottom of p.6.  It is his famous essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren."  Keynes argued we would one day (soon) have enough material prosperity to abolish scarcity.  Most importantly, from his Bloomsbury perspective, pro-commercial norms could fade away, as they would no longer be needed as an incentive.  Society would be much the better for it; Daniel Bell later turned this argument upside down by fearing the decline of this ethic.

More wealth brings, on average, greater happiness (see Wolfers-Stevenson for the evidence, Kahneman too), but often through indirect and circuitous routes, and without guarantees.  The bottom line is that most of us keep on striving for more.  Furthermore, happiness isn't the only end we desire, and money is a route to power and esteem as well, as distinct from happiness.  Material satisfaction isn't enough in life.  Unlike Keynes (and Bell), I expect that norms to both encourage and regulate avarice will be with us for a very long time to come.

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