Macroeconomics is Real

Does this seemingly obvious element of life even need to be asserted? Apparently it does, because even as nations everywhere grapple with budgets and monetary concerns, there are those who insist that macroeconomics as a discipline is not real. Somewhat misguided in the present? Of course. Something to be done away with? Certainly not. As long as there are nations, and nations are in fact a part of the budget coordination and consideration of any group of people,  there are going to be economic issues which fall under the rubric of macroeconomics.

How could it possibly be any other way? And yet, people - quite often serious scholars who really should know better - try to insist that macroeconomics is not real. What's more, macroeconomics is monetary, as Marcus Nunes pointed out in this post as a reply to Robert Higgs. Monetarism matters now more than ever, because it continues to utilize a dynamic concept of economic thought which allows a focus on future potential.

Whereas older forms of monetarism often focused on the gold standard and other aspects of resource use which readily aligned with the standard, Market Monetarists now focus on aggregate spending as measured by the time elements of individual participants. This active conception of economic activity is presently missing from both Keynesian and Austrian thought, which both assign a greater role to credit allocation in the marketplace.

Sometimes we hear that nations are losing their "importance", a sentiment illustrated in discussion of growing state and local importance in economic affairs. However there are some serious concerns with that perspective, in that both state and local economies closely reflect the same valuations and definitions of resource use which nations have previously defined. That, in turn, continues to make local and state economies quite dependent on the national redistribution that such definitions all but made mandatory, even as states express unwillingness to go along with national programs as they are now evolving.

Protection of special interests - which make so much redistribution necessary to begin with - remains just as strong at local and state levels as it is at national levels. Keynesianism in turn is closely connected to those same redistribution patterns. Even as many on the hard right seek to deny the redistribution they rely on, they still offer practically no reflection as to what might take their place. The more that states attempt to deny federal aid because of the impositions it creates, the more class polarization they will experience from their own limitations to choice.

The point is not to negate national identity because it appears helplessly misguided, even if it presently does. Rather, the point is to find new avenues of economic intersection between local and national concerns which make sense.  Knowledge use and services need to be thought of in local terms of wealth creation, while scarce resources need to be able to utilize national coordination strategies, without the excess destruction of free markets which has been going on for so long.

How might local to national avenues of economic activity be reconstructed so that they actually work with one another, instead of fighting with and taking advantage of one another?  National and ongoing conversations in this regard are rapidly becoming necessary, and summits to make this possible really need to happen before the U.S. becomes more divided than ever. Too many people in the U.S. are invested in spreading blame, lies and even historical distortions now - activities which have to be turned around and soon, if in fact they are not going to escalate further.

What's more, macroeconomic realities need to reflect the rationale for realignment, rather than continuing to detract from the potential of realignment. If people are willing to utilize knowledge in more direct ways and establish understandable frameworks for doing so, governments can work with their own citizens to help them become more self sufficient. It would be far preferable to include such coordination strategies into monetary representation than to simply assign a bare minimum of money to people "at the bottom" who supposedly have no rational place in society. The longer government assumes it can take care of citizens when special interests are completely in the way, the more citizens become endangered as to the services they actually need.