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.
No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.
If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).
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.
The rich do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the economic ladder . . . Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started.
I'm just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.
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