For this activity, you are asked to prepare a reflection paper. Reflect on the concepts you have learned during your readings. What do you understand completely? What did not quite make sense? The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to reflect on the material you have read and expand on it. J.M. Keynes was indeed a true genius. He watched his world fall into global depression and enter the most destructive war in human history, yet he maintained a positive outlook for the future. In 1930, with depression and worse on the
doorstep, he looked ahead 100 years and saw a world built on a middle way between the anarchy of laissez-faire and the tyranny of totalitarianism (Brower & Sanders, 2014, p. 183). In his essay (freely available on the Internet) titled “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (1930), he wrote:
I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of
religion and traditional virtue-that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a
misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the
paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once
more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those
who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful
people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil
not, neither do they spin.
He may have been too optimistic, but he was still right, at least in the abstract. A middle way was needed, and government did, and does, have a responsibility to use its financial resources to reform an imperfect capitalist system.
Based on your reading of the assigned chapters and the Spotlight: John Maynard Keynes (Brower & Sanders, pp. 182-183), why in the 1930s and early 1940s was this such a seemingly radical idea? Might the world have avoided the terrors of these decades had Keynes genius held sway earlier? Finally, in what ways have Keynesian economic policies improved the world we live in? Are there ways in which our world is worse off because of their implementation? It is important to understand that reflective writing is not a simple descriptive essay. It is an exercise in critical thinking and a method for creating meaning out of a seemingly abstract concept.
Your essay should be at least two pages in length and be double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font. Outside sources are not required; however, when directly quoted or paraphrased works of others are used in any manner, the writer is obligated to properly cite the source of the original material.
