In the first article about the musings from John Maynard Keynes, we explored how they still echo several critical aspects, although they’ve evolved in the context of a 21st-century world.
Since his article was written, the world has seen remarkable changes, many of which shed light on the realities and challenges of achieving economic prosperity and dealing with newfound leisure.
The Economic Problem
Keynes was somewhat optimistic about solving “the economic problem” within a hundred years. While significant global economic growth has occurred, the economic problem has not been entirely resolved. In 2023, we grapple with income inequality, poverty, and uneven wealth distribution within and across different nations.
Insatiable Needs
Keynes’s distinction between “absolute” and “relative” needs still holds significance. Consumer culture, fueled by social media and advertising in 2023, often exacerbates relative needs, driving materialism and creating a never-ending cycle of consumption and comparison, leading many to question the true meaning of ‘better off.’
Leisure and Its Discontents
Keynes’s concern about humanity dealing with an abundance of leisure echoes in our times. With the advent of automation and AI, society is indeed grappling with more free time, but it hasn’t necessarily translated into contentment or fulfillment. Modern society sees rising mental health issues, loneliness, and general dissatisfaction despite unprecedented access to leisure and entertainment.
Economic Abundance and Purpose
The idea that economic abundance might deprive mankind of its “traditional purpose” has become prescient. In affluent societies, there’s a growing dialogue around the search for purpose and meaning outside of work. With the rise of the gig and freelance economy, there’s a perceptible shift towards valuing flexibility and personal fulfillment over traditional full-time employment.
The Challenge of Leisure
Keynes’s anticipation of the challenge of leisure is spot-on. However, the picture is more complex than he might have envisioned. On one end of the spectrum, some individuals can’t afford leisure due to economic constraints; on the other, those with leisure often find themselves entrapped in the paradox of choice, leading to decision paralysis and dissatisfaction.
Wealth and Occupation
Keynes’s description of the wealthy classes’ failure to enjoy abundance resonates in the current era, with many affluent individuals still struggling to find fulfillment. Modern society often witnesses a disconnection between wealth and well-being, prompting a reevaluation of what constitutes a “good life.”
Newfound Bounty of Nature
The way society uses the “new-found bounty of nature” will be under intense scrutiny in 2023. The climate crisis and environmental degradation have spurred a global movement towards sustainability, questioning consumption-driven economic models and advocating for responsible and conscious use of natural resources.
Enjoying Abundance
The challenge of enjoying abundance and living “wisely and agreeably and well” is a central theme in many contemporary discussions about well-being, mindfulness, and work-life balance. There’s a growing acknowledgment of the need to cultivate “the art of life itself,” as Keynes put it.
Cultural and Social Changes
The cultural and social context has evolved drastically since Keynes’s time. In a hyper-connected, globalized world, the idea of “roots in the soil, customs, or the beloved conventions of a traditional society” is constantly redefined, creating opportunities and challenges for individuals seeking belonging and identity.
Keynes’s article provides an insightful lens through which to reflect on the contemporary challenges and opportunities associated with wealth, leisure, and economic prosperity.
His questions regarding using and enjoying economic abundance remain relevant, guiding ongoing discussions and exploration of a world of unprecedented wealth and opportunity.
Enjoy the second of his thoughts.
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren
(1930)*
Adapted from John Maynard Keynes
For the sake of argument, let us suppose that a hundred years hence, we are all, on average, eight times better off in the economic sense than we are today. Assuredly, there need be nothing here to surprise us.
Now, it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes –those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. The needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable, for the higher the general level, the higher they are. But this is not so true of the absolute needs point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all aware of when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.
Now for my conclusion, which you will find, I think, to become more and more startling to the imagination the longer you think about it.
I conclude that assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not- if we look into the future permanent problem of the human race.
Why, you may ask, is this so startling? It is startling because, instead of looking into the future, we look into the past, and we find that the economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race-not only of the human race but of the whole of the biological kingdom from the beginnings of life in its most primitive forms.
Thus, we have expressly evolved by nature with all our impulses and deepest instincts for solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.
Will this be a benefit? If one believes in the real values of life, the prospect at least opens up the possibility of benefit. Yet I think with dread of the readjustment of the habits and instincts of the ordinary man, bred into him for countless generations, which he may be asked to discard within a few decades.
To use today’s language, must we not expect a general “nervous breakdown”? We already have a little experience of what I mean by a nervous breakdown of the sort that is already common enough in England and the United States amongst the wives of the well-to-do classes, unfortunate women, many of them, who have been deprived by their wealth of their traditional tasks and occupations–who cannot find it sufficiently amusing, when deprived of the spur of economic necessity, to cook and clean and mend, yet are quite unable to find anything more amusing.
To those who sweat for their daily bread, leisure is a longed-for sweet until they get it.
There is the traditional epitaph written for herself by the old charwoman: don’t mourn for me, friends, don’t weep for me never, For I’m going to do nothing forever. This was her heaven. Like others who look forward to leisure, she conceived how nice it would be to spend her time listening. Another couplet occurred in her poem: with psalms and sweet music, the heavens be ringing, But I shall have nothing to do with the singing.
Yet it will only be for those who have to do with the singing that life will be tolerable and how few of us can sing!
Thus, for the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, permanent problem of using his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
The strenuous, purposeful money-makers may carry us all into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those who can keep alive and cultivate the art of life itself into a fuller perfection and do not sell themselves for the means of life who can enjoy the abundance when it comes.
Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without dread, for we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person with no special talents to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil, customs, or the beloved conventions of a traditional society. To judge from the behavior and the achievements of the wealthy classes today in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing! For these are, so to speak, our advance guard who are spying out the promised land for the rest of us and pitching their camp there. Most of them failed disastrously, so it seems to those with an independent income but no associations, duties, or ties to solve the problem set for them.
I feel sure that with a little more experience, we shall use the new-found bounty of nature quite differently from the way in which the rich use it today and will map out for ourselves a plan of life quite otherwise than theirs.
Stay tuned for the third in this series from John Maynard Keynes.
* Scanned from John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963, pp. 358-373.
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