| I am pleased to welcome Lord Robert Skidelsky back to the Levy Economics Institute on November 19. At this event, co-sponsored by the Institute and the Economic Democracy Initiative, Dr. Skidelsky will give the 2024 Economic Democracy Keynote on his latest book The Machine Age: An Idea, a History, a Warning.
Nearly a century ago, in the essay "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" (1930), John Maynard Keynes predicted that his grandchildren's generation would only need to be laboring a mere three hours a day, given the projected pace of technological change.
Skidelsky, Keynes's biographer, explores why that has not come to pass. This leads him to a broader examination of how, with the intrusion of machines into our lives, "every increase in our own freedom to choose our circumstances seems to increase the power of technology to control those circumstances."
The Machine Age is an ambitious survey of the impact of machines on humanity in its various aspects, peaceful and warlike, democratic and Orwellian, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Stay tuned, additionally, for my conversation with Skidelsky to be published as part of the Levy Institute Podcast series. We will be discussing the relevance of Keynes for a post-COVID economy and another of Skidelsky's recent volumes—Keynes for Today. This book presents John Maynard Keynes as a philosopher, visionary, economic theorist, persuader, and critic of capitalism and money. In this compelling volume, Skidelsky outlines how Keynes's economic thought remains a reliable guide to "the good life" to this day.
Be sure to listen to previous episodes of our podcast, available now:
I look forward to sharing my conversation with Robert Skidelsky with you all in the weeks to come.
Sincerely, |  | | Pavlina R. Tcherneva President Levy Economics Institute | | | POLICY NOTE 2024/1 | The Boy Who Cried Wolf About Government Debt
In a New York Times editorial, David Leonhardt recounts Aesop's apocryphal story about the boy and the wolf, warning that while deficit hawks have so far been wrong, the growing government debt will eventually bite. He reports the economic plans of both presidential candidates would add to the debt that will soon exceed GDP and grow to 130 percent of annual output under a President Harris, or 140 percent with a Trump presidency.
The story of the boy and the wolf was a fable, although it was within the realm of possibility. The fable of the debt wolf is not. While there are real world wolves—Leonhardt mentions climate catastrophe and autocratic leaders, and the authors would add rising inequality and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of billionaires—authors Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray assert, federal debt is not one of them. | | | | Levy Economics Institute | Blithewood Bard College | Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 US | | | |
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