25 extra credit points to Ian for tracking down the possible inspiration for
Keynes' allusion. For all we know, Hobson may have gotten his inspiration
from a similar sentiment in an anonymous pamphlet from the 1820s.
Ian Murray quoted John Hobson
>"It is the denial of this full property which starves our social life
>today. Look, for example, at the civic life of an average
>municipality in England, the richest country that the world has ever
>known. Is this civic life as strong, as rich, as it might be?...Are
>its streets, its public buildings worthy of a rich and civilised
>community? Is it not a commonplace that these external embodiments of
>our civic life are, in every quality of excellence, inferior beyond
>all comparison with the attainments of most of the great cities of
>antiquity, the private wealth of whose citizens was not one hundreth
>part as great as ours?" (from John Hobson's The Social Problem)
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
