I remember my grandmother telling me when she was young they thought it would be possible for the world to move from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week.

Turns out, her memory was bang on. John Maynard Keynes wrote the article Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren in 1930. This is a fascinating article to read for many reasons. Not least of which is his clear eyed assessment of the source of Britain’s wealth and his vision to return to the most “certain principles” of traditional virtue: when “avarice is a vice, and the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour [sic], and the love of money is detestable.”

All of that aside, his main argument was that technological improvements and the accumulation of capital have “solved the economic problem… [mankind’s] traditional purpose.”* Within 100 years, Keynes surmised there could be a 15 hour work week or 3 hours shifts to do the necessary work, to “use the new-found bounty of nature differently from the way in which the rich use it to-day.” Keynes found the current rich avant garde leisure class “very depressing” in their “achievements… in any quarter of the world.”

Ah, sigh.

100 years gone and still depressing.