How Has The Macroeconomy Affected my Life?

I was privileged enough to have been born into a middle-class family in the latter part of the twentieth century in America. I say I was privileged because modern America has one of the most productive and stable economies in the world. Also, America's middle-class is a very stable group of people, economically speaking. Because of this stability, I have hardly noticed my relationship to the macroeconomy throughout my life. I have heard Alan Greenspan referred to as "god," and if he is, then I must be a deist, because I certainly have not thought of him as having any direct influence on my life. However, the fact that I don't think about the macroeconomy is a very telling point about my relationship to the macroeconomy. If prices were going up every week, or if my parents were constantly in and out of employment due to economic fluctuations, I would probably think about the macroeconomy every day. I'm sure there are people in the world who do, but I'm also fairly sure that most of those people are not part of the current day American middle-class.

The overall state of the macroeconomy

One of the most important ways of dealing with the American macroeconomy is to measure the overall economic well being of the economic system. The most common way of doing this is by calculating the gross domestic product (GDP). According to Mankiw, the "gross domestic product is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time" (330). Essentially, the GDP measures the overall economic productivity of a society. The American gross domestic product has only dipped significantly once in my lifetime, and that was in 1982, the year of my birth. Since then, the American GDP has clim...

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...When I first asked myself the question "how has the macroeconomy affected my life?" I couldn't come up with an adequate answer. However, upon reflection, I realized that my lack of a response was in itself the answer. Throughout my life, the macroeconomic system that my family existed in has allowed us to go about our microeconomic lives without concern. The economy has not only remained relatively stable, but it has grown at a relatively steady rate throughout my life. It has proven itself strong enough to absorb setbacks and resume growth after only a short period of time. Unemployment and inflation have been almost non-issues. This adds up to create an economy to which I have given my highest form of confidence: I don't worry about it at all.

Works Cited

Mankiw, N. Gregory. Essentials of Economics. Fort Worth, Harcourt College Publishers: 1998.