I had another dream, I had another life
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
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
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
Walmart catches a lot of grief. For example, as reported by CNN, Bernie Sanders recently “introduced a bill, titled the Stop Walmart Act, that would prevent large companies from buying back stock unless they pay all employees at least $15 an hour, allow workers to earn up to seven days of paid sick leave and … Read more
A recent working paper looks at the effects of India’s 1986 anti-child labor law. Once again, good intentions and actual outcomes are at odds with one another: The estimated effect of the ban is to increase relative employment among children under the age of 14. Having an underage sibling leads to a 0.3 percentage point … Read more
Nathaniel’s review is finally ready!
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