The Mystery One of the great mysteries of our time seems to be why the U.S. economy is so good. A lot of good things are inexplicably happening. The economy tops the list.
Economists remain mystified why.
A little more than sixty years ago, in his influential book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money , John Maynard Keynes addressed the question of the necessary conditions for economic prosperity. Although much of what passes for Keynesian economics today is of dubious worth, Keynes was a perceptive thinker, and a number of his earlier insights have been forgotten. For anyone familiar with the jargon in today's academic economic journals, perhaps the most striking thing about The General Theory is how much of it is written in clear, eloquent English, with virtually no use of mathematics. So far I have ten factors on the list. The first three on the list, and perhaps the most important, are the requisites for prosperity that Adam Smith observed in 1755, namely, peace, justice, and easy taxes.