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Utilitarianism is the view that so long as an action provides me with more measurable economic benefits than costs, the action is morally right

The statement above involves a misconception of utilitarianism that describes an action as being right, so long as it provides an excess of benefits to costs to oneself .

Instead of measuring the consequences of an action to oneself, utilitarianism entails that the morality of an action be evaluated on the sum of all benefits and costs imposed on everyone involved in a situation.

Benefits include desirable goods such as, health, pleasure, happiness, knowledge, and life, while costs include undesirable evils or harms such as pain, sickness, death, ignorance, or any source of unsatisfaction. The principle of utilitarianism, according to Bentham, states that the utility of an action can be calculated by adding the sum of all benefits of an action and then subtracting all the element of harm imposed by this action.

This statement implies that a situation is right if the economic benefits outweigh the costs. In any situation, although the economic benefits and costs are included in the evaluation of the utility of an action, the utility is not measured solely based on the comparison of economic benefits and costs. When thinking about utilitarianism it is wrong to assume that the right action is the one whose benefits simply outweigh the costs, because in any situation many actions could contain benefits that outweigh costs. Furthermore, the right action is the one whose utility is the greatest in comparison to all other alternatives possible.