The great John Maynard Keynes explained it a century ago. In his 1930 essay, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," Keynes predicted that the future would be defined by economic abundance rather than scarcity. But such a cornucopian future, Keynes warned, would create societies teetering perpetually on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Keynes' vision has been updated by Niskanen Center SVP Brink Lindsey in his new book, The Permanent Problem. Today's societies, the Thailand-based Lindsey observes, are all on the verge of nervous breakdowns triggered by economic prosperity rather than poverty. So the challenge today, he notes with his own Keynesian flourish, is transforming this mass plenty into mass human flourishing.
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