Becoming Addiction-Free

How many addictions do you currently have? Are you addicted to smoking, caffeine, sugar, alcohol, any other drugs, the Internet, porn, masturbation, sex, orgasm, gambling, shopping, work, TV, movies, social media, video games, food, or anything else? What behaviors do you perform compulsively, even though they don’t really serve you in the long run?

The insidious thing about addictions is that all addictions weaken the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain associated with self-discipline and willpower. The more addictions you have, the weaker your self-regulation abilities become, which increases your susceptibility to further addictions. One addiction tends to invite others, and pretty soon you find yourself with a half-dozen addictions, although you may only be consciously aware of one or two of them.

Addictions get conditioned when certain behaviors trigger a dopamine response. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps to solidify desired behaviors, such as eating and sex. Initially we experience a reward (a feeling of pleasure) to reinforce a new behavior, and as the pattern gets conditioned, the reward is gradually reduced. The behavior becomes automatic, even if the reward is stopped. If we want to feel the same level of pleasure we did when we first started, we have to keep increasing the dosage.

Unfortunately for us, our dopamine reward circuitry evolved during a much simpler time, when the triggers for addiction-prone behaviors were scarce. In a world of overabundant triggers, we see an overabundance of addictions. Our brains over-reward us, thereby over-conditioning short-term pleasures that often work against our long-term happiness and fulfillment. What’s even worse is that many companies deliberately target these neurological shortcomings to sell more products and services. Walk into a grocery store, and notice all the items on the shelves with added sugar, oil, or salt. One of the main reasons these items are added is because they make food more addictive than it would otherwise be.

These addictions have consequences for us. For instance, the latest Gallup polls report that 28.3% of adult Americans are now obese, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since 2008. That translates into more cancer, more heart attacks, more strokes, more diabetes, and a lot more money spent on healthcare (which is really sickcare).

The Addiction-Free Standard

Overcoming even one addiction is hard work. Facing several addictions can seem monumentally difficult.

But what’s the truth? The truth is that all addictions weaken us. Addictions lower our ability to discipline ourselves. They derail our best plans to one degree or another. They cause us to live more compulsively and less consciously. And as so many people report after overcoming a major addiction, life is better on the other side. It can take a lot of patience and resolve to get there though.

Even if it takes years, if we truly want to live consciously, then becoming addiction-free must be our gold standard in this area. Even if we never reach it, it’s wise to hold this standard as our goalpost. The closer we get to it, the better off we’ll be.

Imagine what your life would be like with no addictions. You’d be more disciplined than ever. You’d have the ability to make conscious choices in each moment. You wouldn’t have repetitive compulsions wasting your time or renting space in your mind. Your thinking would be more rational. You’d enjoy more freedom. You’d have more energy and better focus. You’d probably save money, and you’d surely save time.

Would you like to be addiction-free? If so, then a good place to start is to paint a picture of what your life could be like with no addictions.

Usually when people do this, they underestimate how good life will be on the other side, and they overestimate how deprived they’ll feel without their favorite addictions. The real cost of addiction is often hidden to us.

Did you know that addictive behaviors neurologically suppress thoughts and reasoning that might counteract the addictive behavior? Just thinking about overcoming an addiction can feel like pushing through a thick mental fog. Your own brain will often derail such thought processes in defense of the addictive patterns.

And yet there’s still hope. People have successfully overcome decades-long addictions. Failure is rampant but success is possible.

Noticing Addiction’s Irrational Logic

Part of the irrationality of addiction involves overweighing the downside of quitting. Thinking about leaving an addiction behind for good can feel like losing the love of your life. Of course that’s nonsense, but it can feel perfectly rational.

Try convincing a daily coffee drinker to give up coffee forever, and watch them rise up to defend and rationalize the habit as if you’ve asked them to sacrifice their beloved family pet. Notice how irrational this response really is. Can we live a happy and fulfilled life caffeine-free for all of our remaining years? Of course we can. Lots of people do. But when we’re in the grips of the addiction, our rational thinking gets hijacked, making us compute that dropping this substance (which is actually a poison) and replacing it with healthier alternatives will somehow rob us of life’s inherent goodness.

What if you never had another orgasm for the rest of your life? What if you never consumed refined sugar again? What if you never used social media again? When we ask such questions, our mind immediately objects. No orgasms… that’s ridiculous! No sugar… tell me it isn’t true! No social media… I’ll have no friends! Of course we could live happy and fulfilling lives without these short-term pleasures. When we think otherwise, we’re confusing pleasure with happiness. It’s the nature of addiction to treat pleasure and happiness as one. The less of an addict you become, the more you’ll realize how separate and distinct these are, and the more weight you’ll place on long-term happiness.

Often behind these objections is a bigger challenge we aren’t facing. How would you live if you couldn’t use social media? You’d probably have to develop a whole new set of skills, which could be an amazing personal growth challenge, one you might actually find deeply fulfilling if you tackled it. What if you never consumed salt, oil, or sugar again? Within about 30 days, your taste buds would adapt and become more sensitive, and food would taste just as good as it did before, except that it would be less addictive, so you’d probably eat less of it. You’d also be less likely to develop heart disease.

All or Nothing

One mindset for overcoming addictions is all or nothing, which in this case has nothing to do with the Arizona Cardinals. This approach rules out any kind of ongoing relationship with the addiction. The triggers and patterns must be squashed into submission. So if alcohol is your addiction, this means no going to bars, no having any alcohol in your house, and creating substitute behaviors when other triggers get activated (such as having a craving).

If you relapse with this approach, which is totally normal, you get back up and try again, each time with the realization that there is no middle ground. You can’t have a relationship with the addiction. There is no moderation for an addict. The standard you aim to reach is being permanently alcohol-free.

I used this strategy with overcoming an addiction to shoplifting when I was 19. For 18 months prior, whenever I went out, there was a good chance I’d steal something. Seeing an opportunity was one trigger. Feeling some edginess was another. Even boredom could be a trigger. Once I felt that surge of excitement, I couldn’t help myself. Lots of rationalization stemmed from there. Somehow my brain always had a way to explain the behavior as a good idea at the time.

Eventually I realized I had to stop this behavior for good. After several arrests I was facing the threat of serious jail time if I didn’t straighten out. Even with that motivation, it wasn’t easy. I successfully stopped, largely by moving to another city and nuking many of the triggers, but I didn’t feel like myself for several months afterwards. It felt like there was an empty hole in my personality. I missed who I was when I had the excitement of stealing in my life. I felt like a hollow shell of a person, like my soul was missing. It took a long time to feel normal again.

When I shoplifted, I probably got away with it cleanly about 97% of the time. Another 2% were near misses, where I almost got caught or did get caught and somehow talked my way out of trouble. It was only that remaining 1% where the punishment happened. Everything else triggered a dopamine reward-reinforcement mechanism. Even after I got arrested, I’d take a break for a week or so, and then I’d go out again, and I’d be right back into reward mode.

Even a decade after I stopped, I still had some of those shoplifting-related behaviors. I couldn’t help it. When I walked into certain stores, I’d automatically notice the security cameras and their blind spots. Or I’d imagine how easy it would be to get something for free if I wanted to. I didn’t do the actual stealing anymore, but the other parts of those mental pathways were still present and active. Eventually those other patterns faded too, which took much longer than I expected. Now that it’s been around 26 years, those patterns no longer activate automatically. I was only actively shoplifting for about 18 months. Imagine how long addictive behaviors may linger after quitting a decades-long addiction.

Regulation

An intermediate strategy that works for some addictions is to regulate the addiction. This works best in the early stages of an addiction before it’s grown too strong. It’s also a reasonable choice when some aspect of the behavior must be maintained in order to access certain benefits, such as using the Internet.

Relying on your willpower and discipline to self-regulate is usually a losing proposition since an addiction will weaken your self-regulation abilities. So it’s wise to acknowledge that you won’t always be as strong as you are when you’re at your best. Eventually you’ll be weak enough, tired enough, or foggy enough to succumb. And the more you succumb, the more you’ll reinforce the addictive pattern, and the more insidious the pattern will be at circumventing further attempts to regulate it.

This is where relying on some kind of outside help or tool is useful. For instance, if you suffer from Internet addiction, you can install the Freedom app, which lets you restrict your access to certain websites or to the whole Internet. It’s very customizable. I use this app liberally when I want to get some real work done, often scheduling the block times in advance. If I get triggered and try to check email when I should be working on some deeper task, I get a blocking page telling me that I’m free of that distraction. Going email-free doesn’t seem like a realistic option for my business – tempting though it is – but regulating this habit by restricting access works pretty well. I found this app so useful that I bought a lifetime subscription to it.

I’ve also completely blocked access to certain websites like Google News and MacRumors, which used to be distractions for me. If any other site becomes a problem, I can easily add a rule to limit my access or to block it permanently.

Because I used to access Google News and MacRumors so often (multiple times per day), I could just type the letters n or m in Chrome, and it would automatically fill out those URLs. As odd as it may sound, even many months after blocking those sites, I still sometimes catch myself unconsciously trying to visit those sites by typing in the letters and hitting enter, often after I finish checking email or when I’m between tasks. The behavior has been blocked for a long time, but the triggers still get activated. The pattern is fading, but it’s fading very slowly. If I didn’t use software to block access, my conditioned behaviors would see me accessing them automatically.

As ironic as it seems, the key to regulating an addiction is not to trust your own brain. When it comes to managing an addiction, your brain will often lie to you. It will tell you it can manage just fine if you want to self-regulate and tone down an addiction, giving you the false impression that you can trust it. And then when you aren’t paying attention, it will trigger the behavior, and you’ll be well into it before you consciously realized what happened. Or you’ll watch it happening and won’t be able to stop yourself. If you question the behavior, your brain will give you a convenient rationalization for why it’s okay just this once. And you’ll waste several hours each week, enough that you could have take an extra vacation or completed a significant work project with the wasted time.

Don’t trust your sneaky, addicted brain. Know that it will try to betray you, and take steps to thwart it in advance. Remove the triggers if you can, or put a roadblock between the trigger and the behavior. I know this sounds a bit schizo, but it works.

If porn (or masturbating to it) is one of your addictions, don’t keep any porn on any of your devices. If you have a collection, nuke the whole thing. Yup, all of it, permanently. If this makes you want to cry, recognize that those thoughts are irrational; the addiction is trying to defend itself. Porn is just a sea of triggers that you don’t need. You can also block access to your favorite porn sites by editing the hosts file on your computer. Google “edit hosts file to block sites” for instructions on how to do so. It only takes a minute, and it works for all browsers.

Some television addicts have found peace by physically getting rid of their TVs. Many years ago I listened to an audio program where the author recommended destroying every TV with an axe. That’s certainly one way to make the behavior more difficult to execute… although these days you might need to destroy anything with a screen to make this approach work.

Positive Relationships

I’m becoming convinced that addictions are very often a substitute for healthy intimate relationships. When we maintain addictions, they fill the void that’s supposed to be filled with intimacy and connection with other people. We often see that when people overcome addictions, their relationship lives improve dramatically. Real human connection fills the void.

Addictions can also cause us to push people away without even realizing it. Deep down we feel some shame or guilt, or we fear getting found out if it’s a socially unacceptable addiction. This infects our relationship posture, and other people pick up on those negative feelings, making good connections less likely.

If you feel less worthy of social abundance because of any addictions, you may very well be pushing people away. Moreover, your sneaky brain can predict that too much intimacy could shed light on your hidden addictions, making them vulnerable to change, so by sabotaging your social life, it protects the addictions. Your brain is clever, and it will often give you seemingly rational reasons as to why you aren’t ready to socialize yet. One of the most common rationalizations is the (false) belief that you have to get into better physical shape before you’re ready to connect more. You don’t. You can connect with people starting today.

Consequently, a good way to stave off addictions as well as to overcome them is to be more active in pursuing and maintaining healthy relationships. Would you rather connect deeply with a video game world or with some terrific friends face to face? Would you rather connect with a latte and the Internet or with a romantic partner? One side gives you short-term pleasure. The other side can create long-term happiness.

Now you might be thinking… I’ve got you there, Steve. I know I can have both! I play video games with my friends, and I have coffee with my girlfriend. So I’m doing the relating thing too!

Well… aren’t you clever! Sure, that sounds perfectly logical, but it would make Spock vomit. It’s just another phony rationalization from an addicted brain. Can you see why that would be so?

Turning the addiction into a social activity drags us all down. We do include some relating, which is good in general, but if we’re relating on the basis of addiction, then what are we missing? Of course we’re missing relating on the basis of non-addiction.

Those hours spent in addiction-themed socialization can be a lot of fun. They’ll surely trigger our reward circuitry, and we get a double-whammy of a reward. We get rewarded for the addictive behavior, and we feel rewarded for the social aspect. The reason this seems like a good investment of time is because we’re confusing the logic of short-term pleasure with the logic of long-term fulfillment.

Now if you aren’t an addict, then there’s nothing wrong with short-term pleasure. Mixing some pleasure into your social connections is all well and good. But you turn a corner when you mix in an addiction where some aspect of your behavior is compulsive. That’s when you talk endlessly about nothing of substance because the coffee makes you ramble, or you stay up late playing video games, throwing off your sleep schedule, and giving yourself an unproductive day, week, month, or year. In the long run, this sort of behavior will degrade your healthy relationships, especially relationships with non-addicts who may begin losing respect for you. I’ve heard from a lot of men and women who’ve had to leave relationship partners because of addictions, often while their partners were still in denial about it. It’s never easy to let go for this reason because in the back of the initiator’s mind, there’s the dream of what an addiction-free relationship with their partner could be like… if only.

When we remove addiction from the picture, we create the space for a deeper and more fulfilling connections with people. We also expose the shallowness of connections that don’t really serve us. What does it say about a connection that isn’t as good without gaming or coffee? What does it say about the quality of a relationship if going orgasm-free for a while leaves you feeling hollow and empty instead of deeply in love and grateful? Addictions so often mask substantial weaknesses that we don’t feel ready to face. It takes a lot of strength to face an addiction. It can take even more strength to face the demons hiding behind that addiction.

I’m not suggesting that addiction combined with relating always kills the relating, but I do think that in many cases, the relating would be more honest, more loving, and more powerful without the addiction in the picture. Addictions skew our thinking. An addiction can make a weak relationship seem strong, like giving you the delusion that pushing buttons and staring at a screen in concert with strangers on the Internet somehow makes you all a band of heroes. An addiction can make a conversation seem fascinating and productive, when all you really did was act out a Seinfeld episode.

Since addictions take us out of alignment with truth, we must do our best to shed them, no matter how difficult the challenge. Keep noticing the insidious logic of addiction. It always has a reason, an excuse, a seemingly good explanation to keep you obedient. It robs you of power, freedom, and connection while making it seem like an intelligent idea to do so. This is the part of yourself you’ll need to keep challenging and questioning – and distrusting – if you’re to have any hope of pursuing the addiction-free ideal in earnest.

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix makro- meaning "large" + economics) is a branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes regional, national, and global economies.

Macroeconomists study aggregated indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates, national income, price indices, and the interrelations among the different sectors of the economy to better understand how the whole economy functions. They also develop models that explain the relationship between such factors as national income, output, consumption, unemployment, inflation, savings, investment, international trade, and international finance.

While macroeconomics is a broad field of study, there are two areas of research that are emblematic of the discipline: the attempt to understand the causes and consequences of short-run fluctuations in national income (the business cycle), and the attempt to understand the determinants of long-run economic growth (increases in national income). Macroeconomic models and their forecasts are used by governments to assist in the development and evaluation of economic policy.

Macroeconomics and microeconomics, a pair of terms coined by Ragnar Frisch, are the two most general fields in economics. In contrast to macroeconomics, microeconomics is the branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions and the interactions among these individuals and firms in narrowly-defined markets.

Basic macroeconomic concepts

Macroeconomics encompasses a variety of concepts and variables, but there are three central topics for macroeconomic research. Macroeconomic theories usually relate the phenomena of output, unemployment, and inflation. Outside of macroeconomic theory, these topics are also important to all economic agents including workers, consumers, and producers.

Output and income

National output is the total amount of everything a country produces in a given period of time. Everything that is produced and sold generates an equal amount of income. The total output of the economy is measured GDP per person. The output and income are usually considered equivalent and the two terms are often used interchangeably,output changes into income. Output can be measured or it can be viewed from the production side and measured as the total value of final goods and services or the sum of all value added in the economy.

Macroeconomic output is usually measured by gross domestic product (GDP) or one of the other national accounts. Economists interested in long-run increases in output study economic growth. Advances in technology, accumulation of machinery and other capital, and better education and human capital are all factors that lead to increased economic output over time. However, output does not always increase consistently over time. Business cycles can cause short-term drops in output called recessions. Economists look for macroeconomic policies that prevent economies from slipping into recessions and that lead to faster long-term growth.

Unemployment

A chart using US data showing the relationship between economic growth and unemployment expressed by Okun's law. The relationship demonstrates cyclical unemployment. Economic growth leads to a lower unemployment rate.

The amount of unemployment in an economy is measured by the unemployment rate, i.e. the percentage of workers without jobs in the labor force. The unemployment rate in the labor force only includes workers actively looking for jobs. People who are retired, pursuing education, or discouraged from seeking work by a lack of job prospects are excluded.

Unemployment can be generally broken down into several types that are related to different causes.

Classical unemployment theory suggests that unemployment occurs when wages are too high for employers to be willing to hire more workers. Other more modern economic theories suggest that increased wages actually decrease unemployment by creating more consumer demand. According to these more recent theories, unemployment results from reduced demand for the goods and services produced through labor and suggest that only in markets where profit margins are very low, and in which the market will not bear a price increase of product or service, will higher wages result in unemployment.

Consistent with classical unemployment theory, frictional unemployment occurs when appropriate job vacancies exist for a worker, but the length of time needed to search for and find the job leads to a period of unemployment.

Structural unemployment covers a variety of possible causes of unemployment including a mismatch between workers' skills and the skills required for open jobs. Large amounts of structural unemployment commonly occurs when an economy shifts to focus on new industries and workers find their previous set of skills are no longer in demand. Structural unemployment is similar to frictional unemployment as both reflect the problem of matching workers with job vacancies, but structural unemployment also covers the time needed to acquire new skills in addition to the short-term search process.

While some types of unemployment may occur regardless of the condition of the economy, cyclical unemployment occurs when growth stagnates. Okun's law represents the empirical relationship between unemployment and economic growth. The original version of Okun's law states that a 3% increase in output would lead to a 1% decrease in unemployment.

Inflation and deflation

The ten-year moving averages of changes in price level and growth in money supply (using the measure of M2, the supply of hard currency and money held in most types of bank accounts) in the US from 1875 to 2011. Over the long run, the two series show a close relationship.

A general price increase across the entire economy is called inflation. When prices decrease, there is deflation. Economists measure these changes in prices with price indexes. Inflation can occur when an economy becomes overheated and grows too quickly. Similarly, a declining economy can lead to deflation.

Central bankers, who manage a country's money supply, try to avoid changes in price level by using monetary policy. Raising interest rates or reducing the supply of money in an economy will reduce inflation. Inflation can lead to increased uncertainty and other negative consequences. Deflation can lower economic output. Central bankers try to stabilize prices to protect economies from the negative consequences of price changes.

Changes in price level may be the result of several factors. The quantity theory of money holds that changes in price level are directly related to changes in the money supply. Most economists believe that this relationship explains long-run changes in the price level. Short-run fluctuations may also be related to monetary factors, but changes in aggregate demand and aggregate supply can also influence price level. For example, a decrease in demand due to a recession can lead to lower price levels and deflation. A negative supply shock, such as an oil crisis, lowers aggregate supply and can cause inflation.

Macroeconomic models

Aggregate demand–aggregate supply

A traditional AS–AD diagram showing a shift in AD and the AS curve becoming inelastic beyond potential output.

The AD-AS model has become the standard textbook model for explaining the macroeconomy. This model shows the price level and level of real output given the equilibrium in aggregate demand and aggregate supply. The aggregate demand curve's downward slope means that more output is demanded at lower price levels. The downward slope is the result of three effects: the Pigou or real balance effect, which states that as real prices fall, real wealth increases, resulting in higher consumer demand of goods; the Keynes or interest rate effect, which states that as prices fall, the demand for money decreases, causing interest rates to decline and borrowing for investment and consumption to increase; and the net export effect, which states that as prices rise, domestic goods become comparatively more expensive to foreign consumers, leading to a decline in exports.

In the conventional Keynesian use of the AS-AD model, the aggregate supply curve is horizontal at low levels of output and becomes inelastic near the point of potential output, which corresponds with full employment. Since the economy cannot produce beyond the potential output, any AD expansion will lead to higher price levels instead of higher output.

The AD–AS diagram can model a variety of macroeconomic phenomena, including inflation. Changes in the non-price level factors or determinants cause changes in aggregate demand and shifts of the entire aggregate demand (AD) curve. When demand for goods exceeds supply there is an inflationary gap where demand-pull inflation occurs and the AD curve shifts upward to a higher price level. When the economy faces higher costs, cost-push inflation occurs and the AS curve shifts upward to higher price levels. The AS–AD diagram is also widely used as a pedagogical tool to model the effects of various macroeconomic policies.

The IS–LM model represents all the combinations of interest rates and output that ensure the equilibrium in the goods and money markets. The goods market is represented by the equilibrium in investment and saving (IS), and the money market is represented by the equilibrium between the money supply and liquidity preference. The IS curve consists of the points where investment, given the interest rate, is equal to savings, given output.

Growth models

The neoclassical growth model of Robert Solow has become a common textbook model for explaining economic growth in the long-run. The model begins with a production function where national output is the product of two inputs: capital and labor. The Solow model assumes that labor and capital are used at constant rates without the fluctuations in unemployment and capital utilization commonly seen in business cycles.

An increase in output, or economic growth, can only occur because of an increase in the capital stock, a larger population, or technological advancements that lead to higher productivity (total factor productivity). An increase in the savings rate leads to a temporary increase as the economy creates more capital, which adds to output. However, eventually the depreciation rate will limit the expansion of capital: savings will be used up replacing depreciated capital, and no savings will remain to pay for an additional expansion in capital. Solow's model suggests that economic growth in terms of output per capita depends solely on technological advances that enhance productivity.

In the 1980s and 1990s endogenous growth theory arose to challenge neoclassical growth theory. This group of models explains economic growth through other factors, such as increasing returns to scale for capital and learning-by-doing, that are endogenously determined instead of the exogenous technological improvement used to explain growth in Solow's model.

Macroeconomic policy

Macroeconomic policy is usually implemented through two sets of tools: fiscal and monetary policy. Both forms of policy are used to stabilize the economy, which can mean boosting the economy to the level of GDP consistent with full employment. Macroeconomic policy focuses on limiting the effects of the business cycle to achieve the economic goals of price stability, full employment, and growth.

Monetary policy

Central banks implement monetary policy by controlling the money supply through several mechanisms. Typically, central banks take action by issuing money to buy bonds (or other assets), which boosts the supply of money and lowers interest rates, or, in the case of contractionary monetary policy, banks sell bonds and take money out of circulation. Usually policy is not implemented by directly targeting the supply of money.

Central banks continuously shift the money supply to maintain a targeted fixed interest rate. Some of them allow the interest rate to fluctuate and focus on targeting inflation rates instead. Central banks generally try to achieve high output without letting loose monetary policy that create large amounts of inflation.

Conventional monetary policy can be ineffective in situations such as a liquidity trap. When interest rates and inflation are near zero, the central bank cannot loosen monetary policy through conventional means.

An example of intervention strategy under different conditions

Central banks can use unconventional monetary policy such as quantitative easing to help increase output. Instead of buying government bonds, central banks can implement quantitative easing by buying not only government bonds, but also other assets such as corporate bonds, stocks, and other securities. This allows lower interest rates for a broader class of assets beyond government bonds. In another example of unconventional monetary policy, the United States Federal Reserve recently made an attempt at such a policy with Operation Twist. Unable to lower current interest rates, the Federal Reserve lowered long-term interest rates by buying long-term bonds and selling short-term bonds to create a flat yield curve.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy is the use of government's revenue and expenditure as instruments to influence the economy. Examples of such tools are expenditure, taxes, debt.

For example, if the economy is producing less than potential output, government spending can be used to employ idle resources and boost output. Government spending does not have to make up for the entire output gap. There is a multiplier effect that boosts the impact of government spending. For instance, when the government pays for a bridge, the project not only adds the value of the bridge to output, but also allows the bridge workers to increase their consumption and investment, which helps to close the output gap.

The effects of fiscal policy can be limited by crowding out. When the government takes on spending projects, it limits the amount of resources available for the private sector to use. Crowding out occurs when government spending simply replaces private sector output instead of adding additional output to the economy. Crowding out also occurs when government spending raises interest rates, which limits investment. Defenders of fiscal stimulus argue that crowding out is not a concern when the economy is depressed, plenty of resources are left idle, and interest rates are low.

Fiscal policy can be implemented through automatic stabilizers. Automatic stabilizers do not suffer from the policy lags of discretionary fiscal policy. Automatic stabilizers use conventional fiscal mechanisms but take effect as soon as the economy takes a downturn: spending on unemployment benefits automatically increases when unemployment rises and, in a progressive income tax system, the effective tax rate automatically falls when incomes decline.

Comparison

Economists usually favor monetary over fiscal policy because it has two major advantages. First, monetary policy is generally implemented by independent central banks instead of the political institutions that control fiscal policy. Independent central banks are less likely to make decisions based on political motives. Second, monetary policy suffers shorter inside lags and outside lags than fiscal policy. Central banks can quickly make and implement decisions while discretionary fiscal policy may take time to pass and even longer to carry out.

Development

Origins

Macroeconomics descended from the once divided fields of business cycle theory and monetary theory. The quantity theory of money was particularly influential prior to World War II. It took many forms, including the version based on the work of Irving Fisher:

M ⋅ V = P ⋅ Q

In the typical view of the quantity theory, money velocity (V) and the quantity of goods produced (Q) would be constant, so any increase in money supply (M) would lead to a direct increase in price level (P). The quantity theory of money was a central part of the classical theory of the economy that prevailed in the early twentieth century.

Austrian School

Ludwig Von Mises's work Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912, was one of the first books from the Austrian School to deal with macroeconomic topics.

Keynes and his followers

Macroeconomics, at least in its modern form, began with the publication of John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. When the Great Depression struck, classical economists had difficulty explaining how goods could go unsold and workers could be left unemployed. In classical theory, prices and wages would drop until the market cleared, and all goods and labor were sold. Keynes offered a new theory of economics that explained why markets might not clear, which would evolve (later in the 20th century) into a group of macroeconomic schools of thought known as Keynesian economics – also called Keynesianism or Keynesian theory.

In Keynes's theory, the quantity theory broke down because people and businesses tend to hold on to their cash in tough economic times – a phenomenon he described in terms of liquidity preferences. Keynes also explained how the multiplier effect would magnify a small decrease in consumption or investment and cause declines throughout the economy. Keynes also noted the role uncertainty and animal spirits can play in the economy.

The generation following Keynes combined the macroeconomics of the General Theory with neoclassical microeconomics to create the neoclassical synthesis. By the 1950s, most economists had accepted the synthesis view of the macroeconomy. Economists like Paul Samuelson, Franco Modigliani, James Tobin, and Robert Solow developed formal Keynesian models and contributed formal theories of consumption, investment, and money demand that fleshed out the Keynesian framework.

Monetarism

Milton Friedman updated the quantity theory of money to include a role for money demand. He argued that the role of money in the economy was sufficient to explain the Great Depression, and that aggregate demand oriented explanations were not necessary. Friedman also argued that monetary policy was more effective than fiscal policy; however, Friedman doubted the government's ability to "fine-tune" the economy with monetary policy. He generally favored a policy of steady growth in money supply instead of frequent intervention.

Friedman also challenged the Phillips curve relationship between inflation and unemployment. Friedman and Edmund Phelps (who was not a monetarist) proposed an "augmented" version of the Phillips curve that excluded the possibility of a stable, long-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. When the oil shocks of the 1970s created a high unemployment and high inflation, Friedman and Phelps were vindicated. Monetarism was particularly influential in the early 1980s. Monetarism fell out of favor when central banks found it difficult to target money supply instead of interest rates as monetarists recommended. Monetarism also became politically unpopular when the central banks created recessions in order to slow inflation.

New classical

New classical macroeconomics further challenged the Keynesian school. A central development in new classical thought came when Robert Lucas introduced rational expectations to macroeconomics. Prior to Lucas, economists had generally used adaptive expectations where agents were assumed to look at the recent past to make expectations about the future. Under rational expectations, agents are assumed to be more sophisticated. A consumer will not simply assume a 2% inflation rate just because that has been the average the past few years; she will look at current monetary policy and economic conditions to make an informed forecast. When new classical economists introduced rational expectations into their models, they showed that monetary policy could only have a limited impact.

Lucas also made an influential critique of Keynesian empirical models. He argued that forecasting models based on empirical relationships would keep producing the same predictions even as the underlying model generating the data changed. He advocated models based on fundamental economic theory that would, in principle, be structurally accurate as economies changed. Following Lucas's critique, new classical economists, led by Edward C. Prescott and Finn E. Kydland, created real business cycle (RBC) models of the macroeconomy.

RBC models were created by combining fundamental equations from neo-classical microeconomics. In order to generate macroeconomic fluctuations, RBC models explained recessions and unemployment with changes in technology instead of changes in the markets for goods or money. Critics of RBC models argue that money clearly plays an important role in the economy, and the idea that technological regress can explain recent recessions is implausible. However, technological shocks are only the more prominent of a myriad of possible shocks to the system that can be modeled. Despite questions about the theory behind RBC models, they have clearly been influential in economic methodology.

New Keynesian response

New Keynesian economists responded to the new classical school by adopting rational expectations and focusing on developing micro-founded models that are immune to the Lucas critique. Stanley Fischer and John B. Taylor produced early work in this area by showing that monetary policy could be effective even in models with rational expectations when contracts locked in wages for workers. Other new Keynesian economists, including Olivier Blanchard, Julio Rotemberg, Greg Mankiw, David Romer, and Michael Woodford, expanded on this work and demonstrated other cases where inflexible prices and wages led to monetary and fiscal policy having real effects.

Like classical models, new classical models had assumed that prices would be able to adjust perfectly and monetary policy would only lead to price changes. New Keynesian models investigated sources of sticky prices and wages due to imperfect competition, which would not adjust, allowing monetary policy to impact quantities instead of prices.

By the late 1990s economists had reached a rough consensus. The nominal rigidity of new Keynesian theory was combined with rational expectations and the RBC methodology to produce dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. The fusion of elements from different schools of thought has been dubbed the new neoclassical synthesis. These models are now used by many central banks and are a core part of contemporary macroeconomics.

New Keynesian economics, which developed partly in response to new classical economics, strives to provide microeconomic foundations to Keynesian economics by showing how imperfect markets can justify demand management.

Describe Yourself for Job Interviews & Resumes and Online Dating

Describe Yourself for Job Interviews & Resumes and Online Dating

For very different reasons, both sets of interviewers were looking for a perfect fit

Learning how to describe yourself accurately is something we usually have to put some effort into.

This seems to be especially true in most western cultures, where being honest about our skills, qualities, and attributes can be confused with being arrogant, "blowing your own trumpet," and being excessively self-indulgent.

Ready, Scroll down for a list of  adjectives to help you describe yourself.

If we do learn to describe ourselves, we can become being our own confidence guru and simply acknowledge and appreciate our own positive qualities.

1. Top Performer

I want to be judged by individual performance and I want to be rewarded for my efforts based on my work executed.

2. Goal Oriented

I am modest, but hard working and I consistently sets firm goals for myself.

Then, once I've defined the benchmarks, I take the necessary steps to achieve those milestones.

 

3. Leadership

I am a person who is able to control a situation rather than have a situation control me.

4. Revenue Generator

"I am confident in my abilities to produce and while I prepare for the worst, I do the work necessary to tilt the odds that the best will happen."

5. Vision for Success

"I seek to work for a successful company that has strong leadership and vision and who recognizes and rewards performers."

6. Growth and Development

"I am someone who is consistently growing themselves and who takes the time to continue learning even though it's not a direct requirement of the job. I find that many times it's a combination of what you study both, directly and indirectly, related to work."

7. Customer Focused

"Someone who has a consultative selling style and who is concerned with the clients' needs - consistently asking questions to uncover what the client truly wants than being able to meet those requirements."

8. Positive Self-Starter

"Someone who thinks positively and who can execute on difficult tasks. I'm not an individual who needs to be micro-managed. Rather, when given a specific task, I can figure out the best ways to solve the problem in an autonomous manner."

9. Strong Personal Values

"I am someone who is mature, candid and who has integrity. Every day I work to improve myself and my skills which is part of maturing and becoming better at what I do."

10. Accountable

I take responsibility for my actions and when things go wrong I don't look to outside forces to blame, rather I'm someone who looks at where I can improve upon the next time around.

 

11. Self-Determined

I am someone who has an unwavering resolve. I am determined to do well in my job and am determined to have a successful career as well as make the company I work for more competitive.

12. Driven to Excellence

I am someone who has been able to not only meet my employer's expectations, but I would describe myself as a person who has consistently exceeded those markers.

13. Results Oriented and Pragmatic

I have a desire to produce results. I am the type of person who meet challenges head-on rather than sweep them under the rug and hope they go away. While I'm an optimistic person, I am also realistic about the current situation and how satisfactory or unsatisfactory it is."

14. Community Minded Team Player

I am committed to building something larger and who puts aside personal gain for the well-being of the group.

 

15. Resolute and Decisive

I am someone who demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult it is.

Words to Describe Yourself Professionally

If you've already been interviewed for a job, you know the question: What would you say is your best quality? It can be an uncomfortable question to answer, especially since you're already nervous about the interview. What do they want to hear? 

Giving below some Unique Adjectives to Use on a Resume 

Inventive, Exciting Thoughtful Powerful

Practical Proactive Productive Professional

Meticulous Quick Balanced Achiever

Knowledgeable Leader Diplomatic Logical

Initiator Original Outgoing Particular

Patient Active Positive Consistent

Compassionate Incredible Independent Precise

Mediator Emotional Cheerful Forgiving

Responsive Candid Industrious Cooperative 

Why It's Important to Know Your Strengths

Conversely, we're all pretty good at listing our faults and failings. It's as if people don't dare to ask the question, "What's good about me?" 

If this describes you, then it's even more important for you to do this exercise. Words are powerful! If you come up with a list of your best traits, even if it feels awkward to do so, you'll start believing them! This confidence will help you out in both your career and your personal life. 

Optimistic  Accomplished Adept Analytical

Articulate Artistic Self-Disciplined Controversial

Individual Tolerant Reflective Participatory

Unselfish Sophisticated Committed Strong

Successful Diplomatic Talented Team player

Fun Intelligent Changeable Passionate

Intense Intuitive Upbeat Vibrant

Funny Constructive Hard-Working Dependable

Direct Collaborative Loyal Engaged

Empathetic Observant Thoughtful 

There's nothing wrong with shyness, but you may feel that it holds you back from participating fully. Maybe there have been times when you wished you'd been more assertive. Explain that you're working on speaking up more and overcome your fear of offending others.

Ok, now with a little thinking and reflection these traits could provide insights into your best qualities. For example, a controlling person might have a hard time asking for help. Have you ever wished you'd accepted an offer of help from a friend or co-worker? Are you aware of the benefits of not always being in charge? If so, you're looking for opportunities to let go and work with others for better results.