Re: "Is Macroeconomics Believable?"

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	Bruce McFarling advises tonight that if we would make
	macroeconomics more believable, instructors must confront
	the difference between macroeconomic analysis and micro-
	economic analysis head on (from the beginning of formal
	study of the field) and sticking to it.  Students think macro
	is just bigger demand and supply curves.

	In the article under review, Bolch concludes with the hope
	that there will someday be found a connection between
	freedom and economic growth -- more than just an
	invisible hand that turns self-interest into the public interest,
	it would turn laissez-faire into growth theory.

	There is and must be more than one microeconomics,
	else textbook writing would come to an end.  And there
	is and must be many macroeconomics.  One will come
	out of current methods of handling currency weakness
	and devaluation, excessive debt, and inadequate money
	demand for what Asia can already produce and other
	regions can potentially produce.  I trust it will be a
	macroeconomics based on private frugality and public
	spending  --  our hope for environmental protection
	demands it.

	The way to sell it is to bind it to a microeconomics of
	private economic rights along the lines of the 1944
	Roosevelt bill of economic rights.

	And the way to sell that is to trade in the income tax
	for inflation protected saving in individual estate
	accounts that replace the socialist vision of public
	ownership with a private visions of economic security
	within our grasp.

	The ways to fail to sell it is with (a) the theory that
	nothing is probable, and (b) printing bumper stickers
	in algebra.

	John Gelles