with Reddi-wip and a corn-syrup-infused maraschino cherry, why would we bother to press on with the rat race? Clearly, Keynes wrote this in an era when suburban American families felt they “made it” if they could walk on wall-to-wall carpeting and beat the scourge of “ring around the collar.” He did not seem to realize, as Adam Smith did in 1776, that humans have a natural tendency to continue improving their lives. Wall-to-wall carpeting begets Formica, which begets granite counters, and then a 57,000-BTU Viking stove perfectly suited for professional chefs and for amateurs who like brûlée-ing their own crème and the alluring look of singed eyebrows. Keynes did worry that with cupboards full and new cars shined we would get bored. And it’s true that today’s retirees often complain of tedium. Keynes did worry that with cupboards full and new cars shined we would get bored. And it’s true that today’s retirees often complain of tedium. What if the whole world retired? How many Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger “final tours” would it take to entertain an entirely pensioned population? Existential angst might pervade a sated world. Often joy comes in striving for goals... not achieving them. In a book called Rush: Why We Thrive in the Rat Race , I showed that people who retire early often get stupid and sad. To Joseph Schumpeter, the greatest threat came not from financial factors such as falling
could not legitimately arrive until after capitalism triggered unimagined wealth. That’s why Marx did not think Russia was a good candidate for socialism (at least he got something right). Instead, he saw socialism springing up in industrialized England and France. Marx was repulsed by unscientific romantics who depicted capitalism as a wicked accident contrived by evil men. Marx composed some of the most eloquent paeans to the capitalist, since he thought that capitalism liberated man from even worse conditions. Marx’s Communist Manifesto had no time for fuzzy-headed nostalgia mongers: “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization.” Marx would have hated the Green Party and dreamed of its members choking on their Tofurky. “Capitalism,” he wrote, “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.” He would have sent “back to nature” advocates to their history books to learn how terrible preindustrial life was. In the mid-20th century, arch-rival economists Joseph Schumpeter and John Maynard Keynes pondered the future of capitalism and came to a similar conclusion: It would perish down because it would first flourish. Keynes wrote a graceful essay called “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” in which he posited that capitalism might conquer the problem of scarcity, bringing endless supplies of energy and boundless bounties of food. If everyone got a Chevy, a Barcalounger, three meals a day, and an ice cream sundae topped
American Consequences
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