That said I agree we should be further ahead in paving a way to paradise.
> Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes -- those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs -- a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.
How would he anticipate houses 50% larger than his generation's, or cars with twice the horsepower at four times the gas mileage, or universal air conditioning (as few houses in the US lack air conditioning now as lacked running water in 1950) or a monthly bill for Internet or proles being able to afford intercontinental flights more than once in a lifetime?
Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things.
Yes. That's math, the rule of 72. At a 2% growth rate the economy will be 8 times larger in 108 years, more or less. The rate is a bit higher, so we're a bit over 8 in the 95 years since that's been written.
> Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things.
But that's not anticipating things, that's projecting an existing growth rate out for another century. Improbable really that it would neither rise nor fall, and one of the reasons it hasn't fallen is that we didn't cut our work week to 15 hours. So the only thing (in this context) that he really anticipated was wrong.