Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren

In 1930, the greatest economist of the age, J M Keynes, sat down and wrote about the future in an essay called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. It was a pep talk for a depressed time, when people wondered if the great wave of progress of the 19th century had ended. There was no need to be down, Keynes argued. This was a time of readjustment and problem solving, and our pessimism would evaporate if we could “take wings into the future”. “What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence?” asks Keynes. “What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?”