What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914!
Interpretation
Keynes reflects on the significant economic advancements and transformations leading up to World War I.
In this quote, John Maynard Keynes is commenting on the dramatic changes in economic growth and development that humanity experienced just before the onset of World War I in August 1914. He highlights the extraordinary achievements of that era, implying that the war marked a turning point that halted or altered this progress significantly, resulting in lasting implications for society and the economy.
In practice
In an economics lecture discussing pivotal historical events that shaped modern economies.
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.
There's a long list of investments that governments could and should be making. There is strengthening infrastructure, such as transport and communications; there is investment in education; there is investment in families, particularly putting measures in place that free women from having to make the choice between raising a family and work.
This is the paradox of thrift: belt-tightening causes people to lose their jobs, because other people are not buying what they produce, so their debt burden rises rather than falls.
The desire for economic prosperity is itself not culturally determined but almost universally shared
There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.
Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.
Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity.
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