THE WEEK

Senator Byrd has called for reducing the budget by five billion, national review stays, and raises him five.

What the new science of macroeconomics (heap big word for seeing things in totals) tells us is that the Gross National Product for 1956 rose to $412 billion—which was $22 billion over the figure for 1955. Macroeconomics also vouchsafes the information that one-half of the $22 billion increase represented a real gain in production, while the other half was merely an inflationary markup. What macro etc. doesn’t tell you and me as individuals is a) what last year’s inflation is destined to do to this year’s production and b) just what good an increase in productivity does when it is taxed away from people in bigger and bigger amounts. Macroeconomics sounds grand in the economics textbooks, but microeconomics is far more informative about what people actually get with the money they take home.

Featured Tags

Senator Byrd has called for reducing the budget by five billion, national review stays, and raises him five.

What the new science of macroeconomics (heap big word for seeing things in totals) tells us is that the Gross National Product for 1956 rose to $412 billion—which was $22 billion over the figure for 1955. Macroeconomics also vouchsafes the information that one-half of the $22 billion increase represented a real gain in production, while the other half was merely an inflationary markup. What macro etc. doesn’t tell you and me as individuals is a) what last year’s inflation is destined to do to this year’s production and b) just what good an increase in productivity does when it is taxed away from people in bigger and bigger amounts. Macroeconomics sounds grand in the economics textbooks, but microeconomics is far more informative about what people actually get with the money they take home.