In the years of the Great Depression in the world and in the U. S. in particular, there was a wave of pessimism, and many thought that capitalism had reached its end and that even worse was yet to come. It was at this time and in this atmosphere that John Maynard Keynes, the distinguished British economist, published an essay called “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” where he extrapolated economic growth and concluded that humankind was well on the way to solving the ‘economic problem’, the struggle for subsistence, that had hitherto been its most pressing concern. He foresaw that in about a century, people would be working less and enjoying more, spending more time in leisure, arts, and literature.
Three quarters of a century have already passed since Keynes’ essay and although he got the econometrics fairly right (in terms of his predictions for global GDP per capita), that golden age of less toil and more leisure seems today as far off as ever. In this paper, I shall look at his original paper and arguments, and try a comparative analysis with today’s statistics and trends. I will argue that working hours did fall until about the 1970s and have been on the rise ever since and that, unfortunately, they will not fall significantly in the foreseeable future despite the global increase in production and productivity.
Keynes first presented “Economic possibilities for our Grandchildren” in several lectures around Britain in 1928 and the final version appeared in print in 1930 as the world was going through the Great Depression. Keynes deliberately did not dwell on the Depression, but took a long-term view instead. My purpose in this essay is akin to his approach: not so much to speculate but forecast the future.