Marshall Brain's Blog

I came across a fascinating article entitled, Economic Possibilities of Our Grandparents, written by Karl Wilderquist. In it, Wildercrist discusses a paper published by John Maynard Keynes in 1930. Keynes' goal was to predict what he thought would happen economically in the future. Looking back at Keynes' work 75 years later is fascinating because Keynes was completely wrong.

According to the article:

• [Keynes] correctly observed that economic productivity had already lifted the average person in Europe and the United States well above subsistence.
• [Keynes] correctly predicted that average living standards would rise by another four- to eightfold in the next hundred years.
• Therefore [according to Keynes], we should soon free ourselves from the struggle for subsistence, transforming the central problem of humanity from the struggle for survival into the challenge to find meaningfully use for our abundant leisure time. The little work that needed to be done would be spread out among the population in portions of perhaps 15 hours per week.

Think about your own life, and think about life in the United States in general. Are we anywhere near a 15 hour work week? No... actually, we are heading in the opposite direction. We are heading toward a 60-hour work week. See this page for details.