2024-07-08
35 分钟Pushkin.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed quite reasonably scared a lot of people.
Fortunes were lost, savings disappeared, factories closed and jobs evaporated.
The only places doing a roaring trade were soup kitchens and breadlines.
Things looked bad with no end in sight.
But one man wasn't that worried.
We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism.
So said famed British economist John Maynard Keynes.
It is common to hear people say that a decline in prosperity is more likely than an improvement in the decade which lies ahead of us.
I believe that this is a wildly mistaken interpretation of what is happening to us.
People were having trouble keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.
But Kane wanted them to look to the far horizon.
My purpose is to take wings into the future.
What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be 100 years hence?
What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?
You might recognize the voice reading Keynes words.
It's my colleague, the economist Tim Harford from the Cautionary Tales podcast.
Tim's very familiar with Keynes rosy predictions about what life would look like in the year 2030.
Keynes thought that the Great Depression recession was just an economic blip, albeit quite a painful one.
He predicted that thanks to industrial and scientific developments, the economy would boom and that the standard of living enjoyed by people would improve dramatically.