William Leith19 September 2013
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, then and now the world’s most famous economist, made a prediction. Our standard of living would get better and better, he said. And we’d want to work less and less. He was right about the first thing but wrong about the second. In other words, getting rich doesn’t stop us wanting to get richer — a very important insight. “If anything,” say the authors, “the culture of today’s opulent societies has become more purposive, not less, more harried, not more leisurely.” An excellent investigation into, among other things, the power of capitalism to create needs.
