Keynes Essay of Possibility

In John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren , he comments on the then current “prevailing world depression” and the general feeling of pessimism hanging as a dark cloud overhead. The cloud being filled with joblessness, soup lines, and in some cases, suicide, in response to sudden financial ruin. The aftermath of economic disaster was so tremendous that its destruction created The Great Depression.

Keynes purpose in putting forth this essay was to look beyond the 1930 economic state of affairs, and past the present malaise, to future generations and what possibilities there could be for them. He believed that there were redeeming, underlying trends, buried beneath the rubble of the fallen financial structure; and that these trends pointed to a hopeful economic future in generations to come.

He wrote, “When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.” One of these moral codes that he put forth, predicated on the assumption that we would one day give wealth accumulation less social gravitas, is the ability to distinguish between, money as simply a possession to be hoarded and spent on things representing status, and money as a means to certain ends, “to the enjoyments and realities of life.”

It seems that Keynes’ 1930 essay needs to be shelved on the fiction aisle categorized under fantasy.