Slouching Towards Utopia at PIIE

Sep 7, 2022

EVENT SUMMARY

Join PIIE for a presentation by economist J. Bradford DeLong on his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia.

Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, as the slow crawl of invention was offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities over successive generations and transforming the economy. Our ancestors presumed we would have used such innovation to build a utopia. But it was not so. The world has instead seen global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo.

Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver a utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, the book reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.