We will not have any more crashes in our time.
Interpretation
Keynes expresses confidence that economic crashes will be avoided through proper management and policy.
In this quote, John Maynard Keynes conveys a sense of optimism regarding the future of economic stability. He suggests that through effective economic policies and interventions, society will be able to prevent significant economic downturns or crashes, reflecting his belief in the power of government and economic management to mitigate financial instability.
In practice
In a graduation speech discussing future economic prospects.
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.
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.
If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free-enterprise system.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it - their shareholders would revolt at anything less.
An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.
What many economists fail to understand is that poor people are no less concerned about improving their lot and that of their children than rich people are.
How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?
There is always some chance of recession in any year. But the evidence suggests that expansions don't die of old age.
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