When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.
Interpretation
Wealth will lose its value in society, leading to a shift in moral values.
In this quote, John Maynard Keynes suggests that when society no longer prioritizes the accumulation of wealth, it will lead to significant changes in ethical standards and moral behavior. This indicates that our values are closely linked to the social importance we place on financial success, and a shift away from this focus may result in a more profound ethical transformation in how we relate to one another.
In practice
In a speech about societal values, one can reference this quote to underscore the diminishing importance of wealth in our moral framework.
As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
We will not have any more crashes in our time.
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.
If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.
You know, I think of the global economy as an inverted triangle, resting on the shoulders of the American consumer. And if the American consumer cannot have enough disposable income in order to maintain a standard of living that creates more opportunities generation after generation, that's bad for everybody.
During the next four years...unless drastic steps are taken by Congress, the U.S. will have nearly 8,000,000 unemployed and will stand on the brink of a deep depression.
Why do we fully tax some kinds of income from capital, like interest and dividends; partially tax other kinds like capital gains; defer tax on other kinds, like IRAs; and impose no tax at all on still other types of capital income, like interest on municipal bonds? This simply is not rational. These distinctions don't have any inherent logic.
A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital.
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