Fascinating, David. This one will stay with me for a while. Your note that Keynes’ 8-fold increase has happened prompted me to wonder what external factors have conspired to make a $70k annual salary inadequate to live in comfort. Hoarding of wealth by a tiny sliver of the population is abhorrent, of course. To what degree does that factor in? I do try to focus on my gratitude for material comfort and to help those in need. But this is a cultural, societal, mass-psychological problem. We’re capable of so much better. Keynes was right about that.
The Auden is very chilling. Eerily echoes this current decade.
Thanks Julie. The $70K is GDP per capita so it would be different than salary based on the components of GDP that are not directly tied to compensation as well as the unequal division. I think Keynes would be very disappointed in how we've used our wealth.
I've come to the conclusion that the 20th century which I lived most of my life in ,is the century I know least about. I've been reading background about WW1+2 recently,went to the British Library in London to read out of print books + I've already learned there was a lot more going on than I knew.
Well,I've been checking my notes to give you the correct information. I'll start with the books;
Dispatches from the Dardanelles by Ian Hamilton. 1917.
Things That Happened by Vereker Hamilton 1925
Lions Led by Donkeys
Alan Clark 1961.
What I Saw in Russia by George Lansbury 1920.
The first book in this list I have in my possession from my late Uncles book collection,he was into military history. It was reading this book that started me asking questions. The author GENERAL IAN HAMILTON was in command of the Gallipoli Campaign and what a pigs ear that whole campaign was.
The further books I read at The British Library and God Willing I will read more.
Now to save me rewriting it all I covered all the material in the books along with other research in Substack posts. I will list these posts so you can find them and read if you want to.
Keynes made a rational argument but status insecurity is not rational. I believe it’s human nature to want more and more of what is valued by one’s social community or class. TV shows depict characters like acrabbi and a podcaster living in magazine-worthy homes that the cleaning team has apparently just left. I sometimes wish I had Noah’s kitchen, although Noah is not real. And here on Substack, status anxiety is rampant. Who among us can say with a straight face, “I don’t compare my metrics to anyone else’s?” Not me.
Gonna respectfully suggest that you consider the possibility that your status anxiety may have been engineered. At the same time Keynes was writing, if not before, America's movers and shakers were worried over the fact that production was outstripping demand.
"Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work — more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”
By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption” — the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes... celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”
Good Lord,I did not know the Consumer Society was as planned as that. I had read that when WW2 ended the factories wanted to stay at full production even if that meant making toy cars or fridges instead of bombs.
The popular philosopher writer Alain de Boton has done a book on Status Anxiety which I bought. His chapter on The Bohemians of the 19th century explained a lot to me. One way to piss off and bring down people who have nice lives and nice things if you are too lazy and stupid to work hard or at all to get that for yourself is to mock and belittle it,for this to work you have to be a funny and engaging person. The Bohemians of Paris especially did it very well and in the 1960s all those young men from the Footlights did it well too. It's cheap,insidious and nasty.
after careful observation, for 45 years, I have come to see that actual scarcity does not exist in the natural world the way we (have been trained to) experience it as humans. it is an idea that took root. it is an idea that was born of the desire for control, for divide and conquer. those who grow food and soil and save seeds and plant the overflow know that nature provides endlessly and exponentially, if we let her. but then who would be the rulers if there is nothing to rule and the mother births and provides all that we need? what then? well then we would be at the mercy of her, we would have to tend our thoughts and hearts, we would have to see the truth, that we are all equal and one and under the same sun.
Oh brilliant. You have said this so well. I actually wrote this but not in such good words in another place. This is what I think . It's Malthusian. It's the cake with only so many slices. And yes its to control us.
We're living in a Gilded Age, where the main purpose of generating wealth is to see it concentrated ever upwards into the hands of an infinitesimally tiny pool of billionaire--and soon, trillionaire--elites. Paul Krugman has recently been stressing that the Biden years were actually relatively good for salaried workers in terms of income gains relative to inflation. But the GOP's BBB will savagely hurt especially the bottom 50% when many of its provisions kick in next November.
But real wealth is not measured in salaries--with the exception of top CEO's and CFO's. But rather in capital gains and unearned income. Which the bottom 90% rarely experience.
As a society we seem to be moving further away--rather than closer--to the capitalistic ideals of the Great Generation, where home ownership in particular was seen as a fundamental initiation into practical Capitalism and entrepreneurialism.
It matters not if our society becomes eight times wealthier when the wealth (and power) is centralized in government. For Keynes's theory to have a shot, we must be an economically free people. Scacity is a function of servitude and we don't solve the former until we end the latter.
I think it is or could be but then people would learn all the downsides of living in a small close community. Like well....in at least one of Thomas Hardys novels he describes the Ran-Tan,how the community shames one member who has breached convention,usually a woman.
Thank you for writing. Philanthropy is work. But almost stress-free compared to a career. In the charity arena, the philanthropist is solicited or one gets to send money here and there like fairy dust. What a kick. On that note, you’ve been Robin Hooded- I sent a small donation to Robin Hood this almost erev Channukah. I want to make the phrase “Robin Hooded” a part of our language like “fetch” from Mean Girls movie. (“Fetch” failed but I can make “Robin Hooded” succeed!). Be well all.
Dear David. I'm afraid that the fact that the next few years will be a time of crisis equal to WWII has totally drained me of any interest in the problems of 100 years from now.
As you state so clearly, the fundamental economic problem of the present time is inequality, not a lack of total resources.
I had a personal parallel to your panic dreams. For 6 months after graduating from college I had a recurring nightmare, probably about 20 times, in which I suddenly realized that I had no idea what papers and projects I had to do for courses. It took about 10 minutes after waking up to realize that this lack of clarity regarding coursework correlated seamlessly with the fact that I had no longer had any courses,
Kathleen, I've had that dream many times. I have classes senior year of college but I never go and never even know where they are held. I'm going to fail and it's too late to make up the work. All, post school.
You compared the income in 1930 versus our time. The average income in 1930 is 9,000 and now is
70,000. I really do not think there any improvement to an individual regarding the level of living because the expense of living increase over the years. What you bought in 1930 for few cents now cost hundred of dollars. Nobody can afford to buy a house on $70,000 salary. We still have poverty ,homeless people and increase in health problem which people cannt afford.
I do not suffer from scarcity in retirement, I think my wife and I have enough to get through without burdening our children. I despise and am disgusted by our society's fixation on and glorification of wealth. The massive inequality is grotesque and unconscionable. Ten percent of Americans live comfortably while fifty percent live at or near poverty. My adult children are well educated, moral professionals without debt and are faced with constant job insecurity and an inability to afford housing. Keynes couldn't have imagined tech oligarchs, a tax system designed to massively enrich the few, a political party that demonizes people who struggle, and a corrupt Supreme Court. And I haven't even mentioned Trump. A sad state of affairs to say the least. I shift between rage and sadness on one hand and optimism and determination on the other that we will overcome this madness.
Thanks Barry. The last month or so have given us some hopeful signs that 2026 will be at least a speed bump. But three more years of this is awful to contemplate.
So interesting. And I also suspect Keynes wouldn't have been able to predict the amount of wealth inequality we are experiencing today. It is a slippery slope, to want more. And we seemed to have lost the capacity to draw a line and say when is it enough? Perhaps it would be easier if some mechanism of wealth redistribution were in place but if we have to count on human nature to put those limits, it will always be a challenge when access to resources, technological advancement and education are still in many ways prerogative of an elite.
Thanks Mariella. Defining what is excess is a challenge. Wealth taxes have not worked well. I think higher marginal rates on large incomes is an obvious place to begin.
"Imagine there´s no scapegoat" is the most important thing that John Lennon has forgotten. If each and everyone would be able to see its own stats, sights, blindness, "problems", "religion" as its very own and no one else being "guilty" or "responsible" of it and that each and everyone can find reasons and solutions only in oneself, that would most enrich any so called "society"(= bunch of individuals). As of yet, that kind of honesty gets defamed as "egoism".
You're welcome... and here for you - and everyone interested -, just finished and uploaded for the upcoming New Year's celebration... my brand new mix: available at a special price (4.68 bucks) for the next 14 days - afterwards regular price - over 70 minutes of uplifting Happiness Therapy music- http://dj-luther-taylor.com/single/168828/phu-k-paradise-by-dj-luther-taylor-deep-dance-soul-vol-58
It is interesting to think of the social context in which Keynes was writing and the general decline of the aristocracy (which of course ramped up with massive estate taxation and other traumas thirty years earlier). All of the elegiac writing about decline - and Brideshead is one of my favorite books! as well as the Edwardians. And big estates did start becoming a thing of the past. But not wealth worship of status privilege.
Thanks Allison. The British aristocracy/elite have been pretty resilient. Primogeniture has played a part. And the American love affair with British aristocracy and I include myself in that.
The aristocracy was broken in the 1920s with all their servants gone and the Heir killed in the war. Then another War and many sold their house and estate to the local authority and they became huge wonderful Parks for us common folk to wander and picnic in and even spot wildlife. But the few that hung on,got wise,they turned their homes into businesses. Eton,the school started teaching rock guitar and how to talk in estuary English for auditions. Circa 1960 those clever,funny,snarky young Footlights men were celebrating the advent of Meritocracy and the Fall of Privilege. 40+ years later our Prime Ministers went to Eton or similar and each new Rock Star or Working Class actor gets outed after a short while as from a privileged background and he learned it at Eton. And actual working class kids don't get a look in.
I love when you try to equate yourself with everyone else. But first to Keynes. What most people don't know is that Keynes was not some hard-headed, detached, quasi-academic, but rather a fully functioning member of the Bloomsbury group--public sex and all--whose societal visions were a combination of fanciful and elitist. So it is necessary to separate his economic projections, which were spot on, from his sociological ones, which were far less so. As to how this applies to you, David...well, you were born rich and have been rich your entire life, which, sorry, cannot help but skew your vision. To bastardize Lenin, "When the last of us is hanged, a capitalist will be there to sell the rope." In other words, our innate acquisitive nature, coupled with our uncontrollable competitiveness will not only impact our sense of what scarcity actually means, but will also drive us, some more than others, to behave in a fashion that precludes retreating to more introspective or artistic pursuits and will spur the sort of behavior that makes Elon Musk demand a trillion dollars, which will stoke a whole new round of competition. Whether you personally have gotten off that merry-go-round is, because of your own background and current situation, to me, not relevant. (But at least you seem to recognize that the merry-go-round exists.) In the end, this is not about the difficulty of changing our essential nature, but the impossibility of doing so.
Thanks Larry. Keynes certainly had doubts about whether enough would ever change human nature. He's not very specific about what people are supposed to do with all that freedom. (perhaps polyamory-was Bloomsbury the forerunner of that?)
Have to go now, I have a lot of Netflix shows to catch up on!
Ha! No scarcity there. Quality? That's a different story. There is a great story about Keynes happily boffing, I think it was Vanessa Bell, on the living room floor while others in the group sat around chatting. I would call that demand-side economics.
Polyamory? Bloomsbury? Not half. They did it and it was amusing and original. Poor People did it and it was not! One law for one + one law for another. Always.
It's great to notice that Keynes predictions have come true and that there are 8 times higher incomes in 2025 compared to those in 1930. Assuming these increases continue, I think you are right that despite any major income increase, many people will still feel on the treadmill trying to increase their wealth even after it has mostly eliminated scarcity for them but are still anxious of still not being in higher enough income status. But the joker in the deck is probably A.I. which Keynes was not aware of when it returns the people average working class relatively higher income back to scarcity because A.I. took their job away in their skill category. And it's difficult for them to develop enough proficiency in a new job skill category to fill the breach. And if too many people go into chronic income insufficientcy because A.I. took their income away from them that could be when America more easily slides into strict economic Socialism where the state possesses most of the wealth people would have had if they'd been able to keep their jobs. Exactly how this would manifest is unknowable until it actually happens. But there is another sort of random wealth that some people have and some people don't depending on how much value they place on it or how often it unexpectedly occurs in their life. And that is the wealth of close friendship. It may be when one's wife or husband or partner in life turns out to be their best friend ever. Or when one meets someone in a coffee shop or at a formal professional event or at one's job or at a temple, church or mosque. They will call or text you or just turn to you and ask how you are doing. If this is at the beginning of day they will wish you well and if it is later in the day they will ask you about how your day went and you will return the favor. Their income status or professional skill set has no bearing on the friendship. They easily help you sort out any difficulties in life by asking you questions about your thoughts and feelings and you return the favor. And you try to possibly make life a little easier for them as they try to possibly make your life easier for you. Some will say that's social claptrap. That there's only competition, envy and a what have you done for me today attitude which either exists or also exists to various degrees within any close friendship. But the ideal close friendship brings some sort of partial or any contentment with life which is the essence of human grace or courteous goodwill at it's best. The close friendship of Mole, Water Rat, Mr. Toad and Badger in The Wind in the Willows is a good example. The wealth of close friendship eases one's anxiety about social survival, troubles, relationships, everything. At it's best it makes life so much easier despite life's difficulties or one's income status.
Larry, friendship and closeness are vital today. I wonder how your vision of an AI-driven society where most are living off the govt. would change social interactions. I suppose you could create scenarios where close interpersonal relationships become more vital or a scenario where we become more siloed.
Hopefully if there is AI taking away jobs, the importance of interpersonal relationships will increase for networking and solace. I think a lot of people silo themselves especially if they are introverted and find it difficult to reach out and communicate with others. But I hope that changes. And I think platforms like Substack will encourage change for the better in that.
I've heard a theory that 'soft' relationships (the term used in the version I read) can be more useful in the wider aspects of life than your close emotional relationships. Like that man you say good morning to every day when he's walking his dog might know of a job going just when you need one,or your neighbour you don't see much of comes round with a box of groceries when all your close friends commiserate with you but don't do that. I've been on both sides of this and it's true. Of course some people have way more "soft" relationships than others.
That's an excellent observation about 'soft' relationships and how relationships don't necessarily have to be close to be mutually beneficial. At this point I think people silo themselves off more easily as David mentioned. It's a rough and tumble world and everyone worries that anyone whose acquaintance they may make will more quickly notice a flaw rather than a virtue. Lean toward noticing a flaw more quickly than than a goodness or a some sort of small beautifulness in the other person. So any sort of good relationship even if from a distance or in daily life is welcome. Thanks for the suggestions of how we can be to others that is beneficial for them and for all.
Fascinating, David. This one will stay with me for a while. Your note that Keynes’ 8-fold increase has happened prompted me to wonder what external factors have conspired to make a $70k annual salary inadequate to live in comfort. Hoarding of wealth by a tiny sliver of the population is abhorrent, of course. To what degree does that factor in? I do try to focus on my gratitude for material comfort and to help those in need. But this is a cultural, societal, mass-psychological problem. We’re capable of so much better. Keynes was right about that.
The Auden is very chilling. Eerily echoes this current decade.
Thanks Julie. The $70K is GDP per capita so it would be different than salary based on the components of GDP that are not directly tied to compensation as well as the unequal division. I think Keynes would be very disappointed in how we've used our wealth.
I've come to the conclusion that the 20th century which I lived most of my life in ,is the century I know least about. I've been reading background about WW1+2 recently,went to the British Library in London to read out of print books + I've already learned there was a lot more going on than I knew.
Ohhh! Do tell! What do you recommend reading?
Well,I've been checking my notes to give you the correct information. I'll start with the books;
Dispatches from the Dardanelles by Ian Hamilton. 1917.
Things That Happened by Vereker Hamilton 1925
Lions Led by Donkeys
Alan Clark 1961.
What I Saw in Russia by George Lansbury 1920.
The first book in this list I have in my possession from my late Uncles book collection,he was into military history. It was reading this book that started me asking questions. The author GENERAL IAN HAMILTON was in command of the Gallipoli Campaign and what a pigs ear that whole campaign was.
The further books I read at The British Library and God Willing I will read more.
Now to save me rewriting it all I covered all the material in the books along with other research in Substack posts. I will list these posts so you can find them and read if you want to.
All 2025.
GALLIPOLI
Part 1 of 3 8 Sept
Part 2a of 3 10 Sept
Part 2b of 3 10 Sept
Part 2c of 3 10 Sept
Part 3 of 3 12 Sept
Part 3a of 3 14 Sept
Part 3bend 14 Sept.
THE HAMILTON BROTHERS
Part 1,2,3. 6 November.
From; Things That Happened.
DONKEYS! Book by Alan Clark
Part 1. 23 Nov.
Part 2. 24 Nov.
WHAT GEORGE LANSBURY SAW IN RUSSIA 1920.
1 December 2025.
Fantastic! Many thanks.
Id better just add my Substack is called Jane Baker I'm Old Enuf to Remember.
Keynes made a rational argument but status insecurity is not rational. I believe it’s human nature to want more and more of what is valued by one’s social community or class. TV shows depict characters like acrabbi and a podcaster living in magazine-worthy homes that the cleaning team has apparently just left. I sometimes wish I had Noah’s kitchen, although Noah is not real. And here on Substack, status anxiety is rampant. Who among us can say with a straight face, “I don’t compare my metrics to anyone else’s?” Not me.
Nor me, Rona Thanks for the comment.
Gonna respectfully suggest that you consider the possibility that your status anxiety may have been engineered. At the same time Keynes was writing, if not before, America's movers and shakers were worried over the fact that production was outstripping demand.
"Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work — more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”
By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption” — the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes... celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”
From "The Gospel of Consumption", Orion magazine
Good Lord,I did not know the Consumer Society was as planned as that. I had read that when WW2 ended the factories wanted to stay at full production even if that meant making toy cars or fridges instead of bombs.
The popular philosopher writer Alain de Boton has done a book on Status Anxiety which I bought. His chapter on The Bohemians of the 19th century explained a lot to me. One way to piss off and bring down people who have nice lives and nice things if you are too lazy and stupid to work hard or at all to get that for yourself is to mock and belittle it,for this to work you have to be a funny and engaging person. The Bohemians of Paris especially did it very well and in the 1960s all those young men from the Footlights did it well too. It's cheap,insidious and nasty.
after careful observation, for 45 years, I have come to see that actual scarcity does not exist in the natural world the way we (have been trained to) experience it as humans. it is an idea that took root. it is an idea that was born of the desire for control, for divide and conquer. those who grow food and soil and save seeds and plant the overflow know that nature provides endlessly and exponentially, if we let her. but then who would be the rulers if there is nothing to rule and the mother births and provides all that we need? what then? well then we would be at the mercy of her, we would have to tend our thoughts and hearts, we would have to see the truth, that we are all equal and one and under the same sun.
Love this. Very spiritual.
Oh brilliant. You have said this so well. I actually wrote this but not in such good words in another place. This is what I think . It's Malthusian. It's the cake with only so many slices. And yes its to control us.
We're living in a Gilded Age, where the main purpose of generating wealth is to see it concentrated ever upwards into the hands of an infinitesimally tiny pool of billionaire--and soon, trillionaire--elites. Paul Krugman has recently been stressing that the Biden years were actually relatively good for salaried workers in terms of income gains relative to inflation. But the GOP's BBB will savagely hurt especially the bottom 50% when many of its provisions kick in next November.
But real wealth is not measured in salaries--with the exception of top CEO's and CFO's. But rather in capital gains and unearned income. Which the bottom 90% rarely experience.
As a society we seem to be moving further away--rather than closer--to the capitalistic ideals of the Great Generation, where home ownership in particular was seen as a fundamental initiation into practical Capitalism and entrepreneurialism.
hanks for the comment. Yes, Keynes would be disappointed in how we've used our abundance.
It matters not if our society becomes eight times wealthier when the wealth (and power) is centralized in government. For Keynes's theory to have a shot, we must be an economically free people. Scacity is a function of servitude and we don't solve the former until we end the latter.
Thanks Bruce. Government is usually the agent of redistribution through progressive taxes and a safety net so I don't see it your way.
David can you elaborate on this?
I meant that smaller government is not the answer to a more equal distribution of wealth and income.
I think it is or could be but then people would learn all the downsides of living in a small close community. Like well....in at least one of Thomas Hardys novels he describes the Ran-Tan,how the community shames one member who has breached convention,usually a woman.
It should be but in UK at least it stopped doing that about 2010. Now it's just a money laundering scam.
Thank you for writing. Philanthropy is work. But almost stress-free compared to a career. In the charity arena, the philanthropist is solicited or one gets to send money here and there like fairy dust. What a kick. On that note, you’ve been Robin Hooded- I sent a small donation to Robin Hood this almost erev Channukah. I want to make the phrase “Robin Hooded” a part of our language like “fetch” from Mean Girls movie. (“Fetch” failed but I can make “Robin Hooded” succeed!). Be well all.
That's very funny, Sharon, about "fetch." It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where George tried, unsuccessfully, to acquire the nickname T-Bone.
Thanks for the donation and I think that's a good phrase!
Dear David. I'm afraid that the fact that the next few years will be a time of crisis equal to WWII has totally drained me of any interest in the problems of 100 years from now.
As you state so clearly, the fundamental economic problem of the present time is inequality, not a lack of total resources.
I had a personal parallel to your panic dreams. For 6 months after graduating from college I had a recurring nightmare, probably about 20 times, in which I suddenly realized that I had no idea what papers and projects I had to do for courses. It took about 10 minutes after waking up to realize that this lack of clarity regarding coursework correlated seamlessly with the fact that I had no longer had any courses,
Kathleen, I've had that dream many times. I have classes senior year of college but I never go and never even know where they are held. I'm going to fail and it's too late to make up the work. All, post school.
Yep, that's the dream. It was very vivid, but my subconscious got the message that I was actually out of school after 6 mos.
You compared the income in 1930 versus our time. The average income in 1930 is 9,000 and now is
70,000. I really do not think there any improvement to an individual regarding the level of living because the expense of living increase over the years. What you bought in 1930 for few cents now cost hundred of dollars. Nobody can afford to buy a house on $70,000 salary. We still have poverty ,homeless people and increase in health problem which people cannt afford.
Thanks Hindi. It's inflation adjusted. the nominal per capita GDP in 1930 was far far lower.
I do not suffer from scarcity in retirement, I think my wife and I have enough to get through without burdening our children. I despise and am disgusted by our society's fixation on and glorification of wealth. The massive inequality is grotesque and unconscionable. Ten percent of Americans live comfortably while fifty percent live at or near poverty. My adult children are well educated, moral professionals without debt and are faced with constant job insecurity and an inability to afford housing. Keynes couldn't have imagined tech oligarchs, a tax system designed to massively enrich the few, a political party that demonizes people who struggle, and a corrupt Supreme Court. And I haven't even mentioned Trump. A sad state of affairs to say the least. I shift between rage and sadness on one hand and optimism and determination on the other that we will overcome this madness.
Thanks Barry. The last month or so have given us some hopeful signs that 2026 will be at least a speed bump. But three more years of this is awful to contemplate.
My daughter recently said to me that he hasn't even been in office for one full year and I was stunned and horrified.
And?
Feels like forever,and I'm in UK,but ours is even worse
So interesting. And I also suspect Keynes wouldn't have been able to predict the amount of wealth inequality we are experiencing today. It is a slippery slope, to want more. And we seemed to have lost the capacity to draw a line and say when is it enough? Perhaps it would be easier if some mechanism of wealth redistribution were in place but if we have to count on human nature to put those limits, it will always be a challenge when access to resources, technological advancement and education are still in many ways prerogative of an elite.
Thanks Mariella. Defining what is excess is a challenge. Wealth taxes have not worked well. I think higher marginal rates on large incomes is an obvious place to begin.
"Imagine there´s no scapegoat" is the most important thing that John Lennon has forgotten. If each and everyone would be able to see its own stats, sights, blindness, "problems", "religion" as its very own and no one else being "guilty" or "responsible" of it and that each and everyone can find reasons and solutions only in oneself, that would most enrich any so called "society"(= bunch of individuals). As of yet, that kind of honesty gets defamed as "egoism".
Thanks Heartworker!
You're welcome... and here for you - and everyone interested -, just finished and uploaded for the upcoming New Year's celebration... my brand new mix: available at a special price (4.68 bucks) for the next 14 days - afterwards regular price - over 70 minutes of uplifting Happiness Therapy music- http://dj-luther-taylor.com/single/168828/phu-k-paradise-by-dj-luther-taylor-deep-dance-soul-vol-58
PLAYLIST : http://dj-luther-taylor.com/files/1387285/dj-luther-taylor-deep-dance-soul-vol-58-phu-k-paradise-playlist.jpg
It is interesting to think of the social context in which Keynes was writing and the general decline of the aristocracy (which of course ramped up with massive estate taxation and other traumas thirty years earlier). All of the elegiac writing about decline - and Brideshead is one of my favorite books! as well as the Edwardians. And big estates did start becoming a thing of the past. But not wealth worship of status privilege.
Thanks Allison. The British aristocracy/elite have been pretty resilient. Primogeniture has played a part. And the American love affair with British aristocracy and I include myself in that.
The aristocracy was broken in the 1920s with all their servants gone and the Heir killed in the war. Then another War and many sold their house and estate to the local authority and they became huge wonderful Parks for us common folk to wander and picnic in and even spot wildlife. But the few that hung on,got wise,they turned their homes into businesses. Eton,the school started teaching rock guitar and how to talk in estuary English for auditions. Circa 1960 those clever,funny,snarky young Footlights men were celebrating the advent of Meritocracy and the Fall of Privilege. 40+ years later our Prime Ministers went to Eton or similar and each new Rock Star or Working Class actor gets outed after a short while as from a privileged background and he learned it at Eton. And actual working class kids don't get a look in.
I love when you try to equate yourself with everyone else. But first to Keynes. What most people don't know is that Keynes was not some hard-headed, detached, quasi-academic, but rather a fully functioning member of the Bloomsbury group--public sex and all--whose societal visions were a combination of fanciful and elitist. So it is necessary to separate his economic projections, which were spot on, from his sociological ones, which were far less so. As to how this applies to you, David...well, you were born rich and have been rich your entire life, which, sorry, cannot help but skew your vision. To bastardize Lenin, "When the last of us is hanged, a capitalist will be there to sell the rope." In other words, our innate acquisitive nature, coupled with our uncontrollable competitiveness will not only impact our sense of what scarcity actually means, but will also drive us, some more than others, to behave in a fashion that precludes retreating to more introspective or artistic pursuits and will spur the sort of behavior that makes Elon Musk demand a trillion dollars, which will stoke a whole new round of competition. Whether you personally have gotten off that merry-go-round is, because of your own background and current situation, to me, not relevant. (But at least you seem to recognize that the merry-go-round exists.) In the end, this is not about the difficulty of changing our essential nature, but the impossibility of doing so.
Thanks Larry. Keynes certainly had doubts about whether enough would ever change human nature. He's not very specific about what people are supposed to do with all that freedom. (perhaps polyamory-was Bloomsbury the forerunner of that?)
Have to go now, I have a lot of Netflix shows to catch up on!
Ha! No scarcity there. Quality? That's a different story. There is a great story about Keynes happily boffing, I think it was Vanessa Bell, on the living room floor while others in the group sat around chatting. I would call that demand-side economics.
😂
Polyamory? Bloomsbury? Not half. They did it and it was amusing and original. Poor People did it and it was not! One law for one + one law for another. Always.
It's great to notice that Keynes predictions have come true and that there are 8 times higher incomes in 2025 compared to those in 1930. Assuming these increases continue, I think you are right that despite any major income increase, many people will still feel on the treadmill trying to increase their wealth even after it has mostly eliminated scarcity for them but are still anxious of still not being in higher enough income status. But the joker in the deck is probably A.I. which Keynes was not aware of when it returns the people average working class relatively higher income back to scarcity because A.I. took their job away in their skill category. And it's difficult for them to develop enough proficiency in a new job skill category to fill the breach. And if too many people go into chronic income insufficientcy because A.I. took their income away from them that could be when America more easily slides into strict economic Socialism where the state possesses most of the wealth people would have had if they'd been able to keep their jobs. Exactly how this would manifest is unknowable until it actually happens. But there is another sort of random wealth that some people have and some people don't depending on how much value they place on it or how often it unexpectedly occurs in their life. And that is the wealth of close friendship. It may be when one's wife or husband or partner in life turns out to be their best friend ever. Or when one meets someone in a coffee shop or at a formal professional event or at one's job or at a temple, church or mosque. They will call or text you or just turn to you and ask how you are doing. If this is at the beginning of day they will wish you well and if it is later in the day they will ask you about how your day went and you will return the favor. Their income status or professional skill set has no bearing on the friendship. They easily help you sort out any difficulties in life by asking you questions about your thoughts and feelings and you return the favor. And you try to possibly make life a little easier for them as they try to possibly make your life easier for you. Some will say that's social claptrap. That there's only competition, envy and a what have you done for me today attitude which either exists or also exists to various degrees within any close friendship. But the ideal close friendship brings some sort of partial or any contentment with life which is the essence of human grace or courteous goodwill at it's best. The close friendship of Mole, Water Rat, Mr. Toad and Badger in The Wind in the Willows is a good example. The wealth of close friendship eases one's anxiety about social survival, troubles, relationships, everything. At it's best it makes life so much easier despite life's difficulties or one's income status.
Larry, friendship and closeness are vital today. I wonder how your vision of an AI-driven society where most are living off the govt. would change social interactions. I suppose you could create scenarios where close interpersonal relationships become more vital or a scenario where we become more siloed.
Hopefully if there is AI taking away jobs, the importance of interpersonal relationships will increase for networking and solace. I think a lot of people silo themselves especially if they are introverted and find it difficult to reach out and communicate with others. But I hope that changes. And I think platforms like Substack will encourage change for the better in that.
I've heard a theory that 'soft' relationships (the term used in the version I read) can be more useful in the wider aspects of life than your close emotional relationships. Like that man you say good morning to every day when he's walking his dog might know of a job going just when you need one,or your neighbour you don't see much of comes round with a box of groceries when all your close friends commiserate with you but don't do that. I've been on both sides of this and it's true. Of course some people have way more "soft" relationships than others.
That's an excellent observation about 'soft' relationships and how relationships don't necessarily have to be close to be mutually beneficial. At this point I think people silo themselves off more easily as David mentioned. It's a rough and tumble world and everyone worries that anyone whose acquaintance they may make will more quickly notice a flaw rather than a virtue. Lean toward noticing a flaw more quickly than than a goodness or a some sort of small beautifulness in the other person. So any sort of good relationship even if from a distance or in daily life is welcome. Thanks for the suggestions of how we can be to others that is beneficial for them and for all.
Thanks for the Keynes primer. Fascinating stuff. If only he'd been right about it all.
Thanks Jennifer,
Then something else would be scarse
For example, people without dread and nervous breakdowns. (Or you name it. everything can become/made scarce)
Everybody would be trying so hard to be picked/perceived as one without dread or breakdown, that only this trying hard would make him unfit.
Hard to kick that striving habit, Chen, very hard!