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we have few civilian arrangements that are by central design and purpose directed to large-scale participation in modern scientific and technological progress and its large-scale application in advance of knowledge that these will be commercially feasible. Much has been accomplished by research and development not immediately subject to commercial criteria under the inspiration of military need. This has done more to save us from the partial technological stagnation that is inherent in a consumer goods economy than we imagine. But this is a hideously inefficient way of subsidizing general
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To have failed to solve the problem of producing goods would have been to continue man in his oldest and most grievous misfortune. But to fail to see that we have solved it, and to fail to proceed thence to the next tasks, would be fully as tragic.
Summary. We have solved the problem of production!
Born in a world of poverty and privation, economics as a subject matter has been slow to recognize the difference that is made by wealth.
Such doctrine, once again, allows the affluent to relax not with the ostentatious cruelty of Social Darwinism but nonetheless in the contented belief that no ameliorative action is possible or socially wise.
out of great well-being come the resources for the production of weapons of ever increasing danger, ever greater capacity for devastation.
we arm ourselves out of our affluence to protect our good fortune.
two pleas. One is to resist the tendency of recent times, which is, as so often before, to find social doctrine that limits or rejects the social claims of the poor. Instead let us put elimination of poverty in the affluent society strongly, even centrally, on the social and political agenda. And let us protect our affluence from those who, in the name of defending it, would leave the planet only with its ashes.
No other course of action in economics has ever rivaled monetary policy in its capacity to survive failure.
Though the views of authors are not to be trusted on such matters, it seems likely that the argument here offered has had something to do with the result. It has been repeatedly cited in legislative battles over the sales tax.
