If these days most economists tend to dismiss “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” as either frivolous or deeply flawed, this is because they suffer from what I would call a failure of imagination. They think the sole purpose of writing is to convey information, and they refuse to acknowledge that any effort at writing, even the driest assemblage of mathematical models and stilted prose, has not only logical and informative aspects but also aspects of performance and persuasion, and therefore its purpose is not limited only to the facts and figures it conveys. There is, in other words, a rhetorical side to economics. Rhetorical not in the sense of a question that you’re not supposed to answer, but in the sense of belonging to the art of rhetoric, an art that economists, like most people, tend to look down upon—“That’s all just rhetoric!”—as if rhetoric is some horrible thing.