Evaluating Keynes's Projected Possibilities

At the onset of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes made some startlingly optimistic predictions about the economic possibilities his grandchildren might face a century later. Within the next 100 years, Keynes proclaimed, technological progress would solve the economic problem facing human beings, individuals would devote themselves to noneconomic pursuits instead, and no one would continue to strive for relative goods. Was Keynes right? This article examines each of Keynes's three main prophecies and concludes that, even though over 75 years have transpired since they were made, and even though they were founded in part on the belief held by most classical economists in the value of technological progress and economic growth, not one of Keynes's predictions has been realized. Copyright © 2008 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc..