In the Long Run ‘We’ are all … Irrelevant

In the Long Run ‘We’ are all … Irrelevant

Perhaps Keynes’ most quotable and frustrating remark is, ‘In the long run we are all dead’. To dispose of it I am tempted to brandish the riposte of Ludwig von Mises;

‘I do not question the truth of this statement: I even consider it as the only correct declaration of the 

Neo British Cambridge School’.  (Economic Planning, 1945)

But this sally is to evade Keynes’ point. Which is, as far as I can see,  that ‘the rate of discount’ is not zero;  and (to illustrate his thrust) assuring the patient that their agony will ultimately vanish hardly by itself constitutes sufficient grounds for inactivity. It would hardly constitute grounds (for example) to decline to purchase morphine.

Keynes’ remark, thus interpreted, is both irresistible and weak. It may with equal justice be retorted that time preference is not infinite. And it is not infinite; not even for that futurity when ‘we’ are dead, and gone, and wholly untouchable by events on earth. Was not Keynes himself concerned with the ‘economic possibilities of our grandchildren’?

While on the matter of mortality ….  the Australian Bureau of Statistics' just released Causes of Death gives a striking measurement of  how quickly our ‘journey’s end’ is changing. In 2001 ‘Ischaemic heart disease’ (which, of course, felled Keynes) killed 26, 234 people.  In 2010 it killed 21708 people; a decline of 4526. In 2001 3740 died of Alzheimer’s and dementia. But by 2010 9003 did.

(see: http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/E39670183DE1B0D9CA2579C6000F7A4E/$File/33030_2010.pdf)