What industry should you work in? Or should you go back to school? Where should you live? Should you own your own home or rent? Should your next purchase be a big-screen TV or a Krugerrand? Should you buy pork-and-beans by the case and fortify your home against marauders?
These are crucial decisions and economists have much to say on these important topics! Unfortunately, what they have to say is all bullshit. So here is my advice:
Never make personal decisions based on macroeconomic theories.
This is not an indictment of any particular macroeconomic theory. Whether you are a follower of Austrian economics, Keynesian economics, Axiomatic economics or you believe that the financial world is secretly controlled by Martians, my advice still holds. The fact is, macroeconomics is just not designed to help people with their personal life choices and it is not well suited to this task. Macroeconomics is designed to help policy makers make policy. For everybody else, its study is just a hobby.
