The Inequality Illusion?

Economists Wojciech Kopczuk and Allison Schrager have a Foreign Affairs article with the eye-catching title “The Inequality Illusion.” The two argue that “imposing a tax on wealth is a terrible way to promote equality. It actually benefits the super wealthy the most.” They continue: What is not widely understood is that the growth in income … Read more

500+ Economists Against Raising Labor Costs

Over 500 economists (including three Nobel laureates) have signed a letter to “Federal Policy Makers” arguing that hiking the minimum wage would be damaging to job creation and the economy:* As economists, we understand the fragile nature of this recovery and the dire financial realities of the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty. To … Read more

“Job Creation” Is Easy…And Sort Of Misses the Point

Nathaniel’s recent post on minimum wage touches on a couple of important–if not overlooked–points about the “job creation” debate: (1) innovation vs. job preservation and, implicitly, (2) wealth vs. jobs. If the goal is to create jobs for the sake of creating jobs, then the task is pretty straightforward. As economist Steven Horwitz says above, … Read more

We are All Friedmanites Now

Found an interesting blog post from a Canadian economics blog: There are no Friedmans today, except maybe Friedman himself. The basic point is simple: “The right won the economics debate; left and right are just haggling over details.” Of course, you wouldn’t know that from most economics debates. The world has a funny habit of forgetting … Read more