The Economic Problem...the Problem Of Want And

In This Autumn Of 1919, In Which I Write, We Are At The Dead Season Of Our Fortunes.

I Was Suffering From My Chronic Delusion That One Good Share Is Safer Than Ten Bad Ones, And I Am Always Forgetting That Hardly Anyone Else Shares This Particular Delusion.

Economists Must Leave To Adam Smith Alone The Glory Of The Quarto, Must Pluck The Day, Fling Pamphlets Into The Wind, Write Always Sub Specie Temporis , And Achieve Immortality By Accident, If At All.

Americans Are Apt To Be Unduly Interested In Discovering What Average Opinion Believes Average Opinion To Be.

I See, Therefore, The Rentier Aspect Of Capitalism As A Transitional Phase Which Will Disappear When It Has Done Its Work. And With The Disappearance Of Its Rentier Aspect Much Else In It Besides Will Suffer A Sea-change. It Will Be, Moreover, A Great Advantage Of The Order Of Events Which I Am Advocating, That The Euthanasia Of The Rentier, Of The Functionless Investor, Will Be Nothing Sudden, Merely A Gradual But Prolonged Continuance Of What We Have Seen Recently In Great Britain, And Will Need No Revolution.