Aunt Elsie's Recipe; R. Heiple

IF the term (( growing old gracefully" ever applied to any particular indi vidual, it sure fits my Aunt Elsie. At 90 she needs a magnifying glass to read the paper, but read the paper she does, as well as live alone and keep house, braid room-size rugs, make needlepoint pictures, refinish furniture, and babysit great grandchildren. She goes to church, takes care in her appearance and always maintains a cheerful disposi tion. Ask her for a recipe of life and she would tell you to ((take pride in your work and let other people be, so they can do the same." And you know this recipe has more than individual application. It is really the answer also to the ecoThis article Is from the 1979 Annual Report of the Abingdon (illinois) Bank and Trust Company of which Mr. Heiple Is President. nomic and political problems that beset the nation and the world. It is the simple solution to the current conflict in the economics profession between microeconomics and mac roeconomics.

Macroeconomics is the economic theory which looks to the statistics of a nation's total economic activity (gross national product, etc.) and holds that policy change designed to alter these total statistical aggre gates is the way to determine economic policy and promote eco nomic progress. Microeconomics, in contrast, is the economic theory which says the statistics of total economic activity are valueless as far as providing clues to policy de cisions. Microeconomics holds that the individual person and the way his individual activity is influenced 259 260 THE FREEMAN by governmental policy is the ex planation to economic progress or the lack of economic progress. Economists, like doctors, tend to make simple things sound difficult. It may be that ((a transverse fracture of the ulna" is medically precise but a simple ((broken arm" is often a superior explanation. The conflict between micro vs. macro can also be simplified. The macro believers would have government plan the economy and they would force the individual citizen through regula tion and taxation to spend his money and time in ways the plan ners think desirable, even though the individual would not make the same choice if left to his own desire.

Individuals like Karl Marx, Nikolai Lenin, John Maynard Keynes, Ken neth Galbraith and Walter Heller are individuals who could be de scri bed as macro-economists. On the other hand individuals such as Adam· Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and my Aunt Elsie are micro-economists. They believe that each individual person is able to make his own deci sions better than some bureaucrat. They believe that each individual, if faced with the choice of working or J. Ollie Edmunds IDEAS ON going hungry, will work, and that no individual as a matter of right has a claim to another person's property. This does not mean charity is pre cluded. It does mean that giving to another is voluntary and not com pulsory. They believe that people, if left alone unhindered by regulation and excessive taxation, will produce more, consume more, save more, and in so doing create a better nation and society for everyone.

My Aunt Elsie, without ever hav ing gone to college or read an eco nomics book, knows human na ture, the way life really is, and more about economics than Galbraith, Heller, and Keynes put together. She knows instinctively that inflation, unemployment, excessive taxation, oppressive welfare, shoddy mer chandise, a shortage of competent help, and a general feeling of dis satisfaction are all the results of macroeconomic policy of regulation and taxation. How much better it would be if our national policy was to let people alone to take care of themselves. The progress, prosper ity, and well-being that would flow from this philosophy would stagger the imagination of the supreme op timist. ® LIBERTY THE time has come for us to re-establish the rights for which we stand-to reassert our inalienable rights to human dignity, self-respect, self-reliance-to be again the kind of people who once made America great.