ECONOMICS: A Look at 2049

The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The professors of the "dismal science" have always scotched this sunny Stevenson couplet. To such economists as Thomas Robert Malthus and John Stuart Mill in the 19th Century and John Maynard Keynes in the 20th, the world did not seem so full. Any economic system, said the Mill school, would either become static or it would fail to provide for its own. Lesser Cassandras, including New Dealers, have foretold the depletion of the world's oil and coal reserves, the exhaustion of soils, have pronounced the U.S. economy to be "mature," i.e., incapable of further expansion. Most of these experts offered some laws whereby, they held, a limited number of things could be fairly shared and regularly produced. They denied the possibility of burgeoning plenty; instead, they promised "stability."

Economist Harold G. Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution, challenges this position in an important new book soberly titled Controlling Factors in Economic Development (397 pp.; the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.; $4). On the strength of 30 years of his own study and the institution's voluminous research, Moulton declares: 1) there is no known limit to the potential wealth of the world, and 2) there is no known method to assure economic stability.

Pleasure Boats & Violins. Potentially, says Moulton, the natural resources and the productive capacity of the U.S. could, in the year 2049, support a population of 300 million at a standard of living eight times as high as today's. In this bright future, each American would spend eight times as much as he does today for food, 16 times for housing, 20 times for clothing, and 33 times for recreation and travel.

To supply these things, America's factories and mines would have to produce between five and ten times as much as today, and its farms almost three times as much. Moulton points out that, even with present knowledge, vast new areas can be brought under cultivation, swamps and deserts reclaimed; he believes that certain crops could be raised in the fertile bed of the ocean. Fertilizers could increase farm output as much as the "discovery of a sixth continent."

Better built, more attractive homes, more stylish and durable clothes could also be readily available. With precise enthusiasm, Prophet Moulton gives such detailed examples of potential progress as non-warp, non-scratch, non-splinter pleasure boats, and plastic violins which might all but rival the Stradivarius in tone.

Potential Paradise. The basic materials for such expansion seem adequate in the U.S. for centuries to come. U.S. coal seams will last for "thousands of years." Known high-and medium-grade iron ore deposits in the U.S. will last 40 years, lower-grade ore some 600 years. Moulton also expects new deposits to be discovered. New techniques will further stretch existing supplies. Example: gas turbines are so cheap and efficient that one day a turbine the size of a dial telephone may power the American automobile.