Keynes believed the essence of the economic problem of humanity was mechanical and could be expressed as a relationship between aggregate income and output , the price level , and total employment . The rate of interest and the volume of investment could be adjusted to attain the optimum level . As such , the business cycle and poverty could be solved through enlightened engineering if the government had the capacity and the objectivity to design and implement the appropriate stabilizing mechanisms .

Once the economic problem was solved , Keynes believed , humankind would be able to move beyond the struggle of mere subsistence and survival . The economic necessity of hunting and gathering , cooking , cleaning , and mending would occupy only a fraction of our time . We would no longer sweat for our daily bread ; in fact , the problem for humanity would be “ how to occupy the leisure , which science and compound interest will have won for him , to live wisely and agreeably and well .” Thus we can speak of a Keynesian utopia , and in fact Thomas More was an inspiration . So strong was Keynes ’ s optimism that he believed the permanent problem of the human race would be to unlearn the necessity for striving , to learn how to live the good life .

The most seductive notion contained in the Keynesian vision of the future is that the art of life would replace the means of life as the primary concern of humanity . The greatest fear he had for the future was that humanity would not be ready to enjoy the abundance when it arrived . Critiquing the wealth of his own day , he noted how people wasted the bounty that was theirs to enjoy .

Keynes also warned that if the acquisition of material wealth should lose its social importance , the human race would face a new moral dilemma as well as a new evolutionary challenge , once Economic Man was dead and buried . In a world that lacks want , the pursuit of money for its own sake would become a vice , and we would no longer applaud and encourage those who blindly chase after riches . That kind of avarice would seem pathological even . Material success would instead , eventually , render societies more humane . We would all walk in the same path of virtue and wisdom , and engage in collective problem solving on a global scale .

Keynes hypothesized that the closer we are to solving the economic problems , the closer humanity would come to embracing common , shared human values . Although there is much in the contemporary political economy to refute Keynes ’ s optimistic projection that shared prosperity would pacify the divisive passions and interests of nations , Keynesian optimism about the future continues to animate contemporary social thought .

Keynesian Optimism and the Global Middle Class

Harvard economist Larry Summers and Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani express Keynesian optimism about the

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Journal on Policy & Complex Systems Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 159

Harvard economist Larry Summers and Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani express Keynesian optimism about the