EconLog Archive
Labor Market
Blaming the Person Offering you the Best Deal
I saw a woman on Stossel tonight who works for McDonald’s. She said she was paid $8 an hour, but felt she deserved $15. I thought: Wait a minute, McDonald’s isn’t the only company not paying you $15 an hour: neither you nor I are aware of anyone willing to pay you that much. So .. MORE
Economics and Culture
Friday Night Video: Harvard Tries to be Hip
This doesn’t quite match the U.S. Olympic swim team version, but it’s not bad. Check out Greg Mankiw boogeying at about the 3:00 point. Go Greg!
Taxation
Krugman: Only a “Small Piece” of the Tax Cuts Were for the Rich
Often over the last few years, President Obama has blamed the Bush cuts for a large part of the deficit. He’s right. But he often gave the impression that they went primarily to “the rich.” Of course, he didn’t mean the rich; he meant high-income people, which is not always the same. Many of his .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
Blatant Incompetence
Last spring I asked EconLog readers about the obviousness of on-the-job incompetence. Most people thought incompetence was very obvious indeed. It turns out that this view is widespread. The General Social Survey asks: In your job how easy is it for you to see whether your co-workers are working well or poorly? On a scale .. MORE
Economics of Education
School, Work, and Connections Bleg
I’m looking for research on the extent to which people make useful career connections in school – high school, college, grad school, whatever. My sense is that the economy is so big and diverse that people rarely (a) end up working with their former schoolmates, or (b) get jobs through their teachers or professors, but .. MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
David Brooks’s Conservative Future Out of a Job
Derek Khanna, the author of the important policy brief on the excesses of copyright law, has been fired by the Republican Study Committee. The brief, which the RSC pulled from their website, is here. From the Examiner: The staffer who wrote the memo, an ambitious 24-year-old named Derek Khanna, was fired — even before the .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Decadent Parenting
More on decadent parenting from the intro of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: To be brutally honest, we’re reluctant to have more children because we think that the pain outweighs the gain. When people compare the grief that another child would give them to the joy that the child would bring, they conclude that .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Global Utilitarianism and Airport Security
Garett’s main point – air travel terrorism has enormous social costs counting the effect on foreign policy – is clearly correct. The straightforward implication: Mildly reducing the risk of terrorism with major inconvenience for air travelers easily passes a cost/benefit test. However, none of this argues in favor of mere security theater – like making .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
If I Were a Global Utilitarian…
…I’d probably push for an incredibly stringent anti-hijacker policy. After all, the last time a few individuals hijacked U.S. planes, it genuinely caused a war in Afghanistan and substantially raised the probability of a war in Iraq. Massive loss of civilian life in both countries as a result. If I were a citizenist, by contrast, .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Kidphobia: Decadent, or Just Misguided?
The U.S. birthrate is falling, and Ross Douthat largely blames decadence: [W]hile the burdens on modern parents are real and considerable and in certain ways increasing, people in developed societies enjoy a standard of living unprecedented in human history, and the sacrifices required of would-be parents in America or South Korea or Germany do not undo .. MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Roth Conversion Bleg
Greg Mankiw’s rarely-offered financial advice has put me in a mild panic: [I]n light of the fiscal situation we are facing, I will pass along one tidbit. Consider converting some of your retirement savings into a Roth IRA. Over the past few years, I have converted all that I can, which is about half of my retirement savings. The .. MORE
Business Economics
Competition is a Hardy Weed
Pillar #10 of my “Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom” is: Competition is a hardy weed, not a delicate flower. I thought of that when I read Steven Denning’s recent article on the recent bankruptcy of Monitor. It’s titled, “What Killed Michael Porter’s Monitor Group? The One Force That Really Matters.” The most-relevant paragraph: There was .. MORE
Efficient Markets Hypothesis
How Many Bad Loans Did Fannie and Freddie Originate?
Trick question: None, zero, zilch. By law, Fannie and Freddie can’t originate loans–they can only buy or guarantee loans that have already been made by actors in the private sector. This is no small point, but it’s a point that Zandi leaves blurry at best in his book Paying the Price which I reviewed for .. MORE
Behavioral Economics
Immigration Policy and the World Values Survey
Over at Open Borders, Nathan Smith shares his preliminary immigration policy empirics from the World Values Survey. Out of 48 countries surveyed, the people of Vietnam (?!) favor the fewest restrictions on immigration, and the people of Malaysia favor the most. The people of the U.S. come in 32rd, with 7% saying “let anyone come,” .. MORE
Economics and Culture
Ignatius Reilly on Character and Education
A Confederacy of Dunces‘ unemployed anti-hero, Ignatius Reilly, explores the tension between the school ethic and the work ethic in a conversation with his long-suffering mother: “I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.” “What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.” “Employers sense in me a denial of .. MORE
Fiscal Policy
Popcorn Pork
As the late Professor Olson might have observed, the popcorn subsidy will likely become fiscal law because almost no one, other than the popcorn growers, will notice. Being a small lot, they have all the incentive they need to lobby their members of Congress to do their bidding. The general public will have no incentive .. MORE
Public Choice Theory
Mr. Sumner Goes to Washington
Scott Sumner has posted an interesting story about his trip to Washington last week. Some highlights along with my comments in square brackets: 6. During the day I attended a bunch of foreign policy panels. It was interesting to see what these are like, although I can’t really process foreign policy discussion very well. It .. MORE
Finance
Reviewing Mark Zandi’s Newest Book
My latest book review for Barron’s is here ($, probably). Zandi’s Paying the Price adds some value; this post excerpts some positive parts of the review: “Regulatory, legal, and policy uncertainty was holding business back.” That’s author Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist and CNBC-TV commentator, describing the economy in 2012. Uncertainty over the fiscal cliff, .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
A Critique of Wisdom
Almost ten years ago, philosopher Roderick Long wrote an uncommonly wise piece on political correctness. The opening commands my instant assent: There are two ways of letting political correctness control your mind. One is to reject viewpoints, not because they’re false, but because they’re politically incorrect. The other is to embrace viewpoints, not because they’re .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Friday Night Video: Privatizing Everything
UPDATE: I was wondering if anyone would catch the contradiction between what David says at about the 2:00 point and what he says at about the 5:30 point. Apparently no one did or at least no one who did bothered to comment. It’s a mild contradiction but, nevertheless, is one. “Producing laws is not an .. MORE
Revealed Preference
Revealed Preference
“Nobody likes to pay taxes. Nobody wants to raise taxes on anybody.” This is a quote from a newly elected Democratic congressman from Illinois named William L. Enyart. So, unless he considers himself a nobody, would he advocate raises on some people? No, right? Because nobody wants to raise taxes on anybody. That’s what Mr. .. MORE