Publisher's Synopsis
Maximize Utility ("MU") is, on the surface, a review of contemporary monetary and macroeconomics ("M&M"). It is really a broader summary of the economy, markets, investing and government economic policy, and how these economywide forces affect the lives of everyday people and the economic success of households. MU highlights the limitations of M&M fiscal and monetary policies, active investment management and the myriad government programs designed to improve the economic well-being of people. MU reveals the tenuous nature of the models historically taught in M&M, that our current M&M canon is defunct and that we instituting ad hoc M&M policy with the hope that our future economic output will suffice for all the commitments we have made. Indeed, M&M parables and models are insightful about national economies, especially their historical development. M&M does not, however, constitute a body of scientific ideas to perform successful proactive government M&M policy and to engender greater economic output by the macroeconomic manipulations of interest rates and aggregate demand. Economic policy advocates, whether conservative or liberal, break on prejudices. The prevailing intellectual economic prejudice in America today, perhaps more than in any other society, is Keynesianism. American society perceives spending as the source of greater economic output. The other major player in our economic lives - the investment community or "Wall Street" - has been inordinately successful in the period from about 1980 until the present, i.e. over the lifetimes of the people who currently run America. Portfolios of assets, including stocks, bonds and real estate, have yielded high rates of return. This era was a unique period of asset price increases motivated by a fortuitous combination of underlying economic and social conditions. Through Wall Street and our central bank we have valued every asset to its maximum. We bet our economic future on the continuation of rising asset valuations. Future returns will be much lower, however, and we will face constant government budget shortfalls and related insolvencies like those of many pensions. In America we admire our central bank for managing the macroeconomy and we admire Wall Street for providing high rates of return but both are illusions. Our M&M story is largely a generational story about a generation that borrowed against the future of its children. Maximize Utility reveals the rightness of microeconomics. People are competent to manage their lives. To the extent they cannot, it is largely the result of a plethora of government interventions into education, family formation, healthcare, retirement, housing and labor markets. Our government patronizes our people extremely. Microeconomic parables are singular. Substitution, choice, preferences, technology, profit, marginal product, optimality, etc. are great ideas to think about our economic lives and how to run a household and live a fulfilling life. People need no nudges or supervisions of their choices. MU is three thrusts. It is a review of current economic conditions, a short text on M&M concepts and a section on methods in social and business science. MU is designed to be a reference book to accompany a textbook in course like economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics and various finance and international economics courses. MU is updated through 2016.
