Mr Micawber and the Ethical Dimension of Economics

“Annual income, 20 pounds. Annual expenditure, 19 pounds. Result? Happiness. Annual income, 20 pounds. Annual expenditure, 21 pounds. Result? Misery.” Mr Micawber’s advice to David Copperfield in Charles Dickens’s eponymous novel.

Poster for the 2019 movie of “The Personlal History of David Copperfield.

It is possible to state the most basic of economic principles in terms of simple arithmetic. Few have expressed it better than Dickens, through the…