Cafe Hayek

We don't have to, and shouldn't, read this article in isolation. The author is a pretty hardcore libertarian economist. If you search this blog for "inequality" you'll come up with a bunch of articles revealing that he thinks inequality is at worst irrelevant and at best a good thing: http://cafehayek.com/?s=inequality Example quote: "Second, in a market economy rising monetary inequality is evidence of the expansion of choice and diversity made possible by economic growth. As society becomes materially richer – that is, as consumption goods become less costly and more abundant even for poor people – individuals enjoy a greater range of options of how to spend their time and lives." Given this context, it would be bizarre if this article was not an argument against addressing inequality.

I recommend you read some of the articles that the economist Donald Boudreaux has written on this topic. Most of them are short and well written. http://cafehayek.com/?s=reich

As economist Russ Roberts often points out in these inequality discussions, the quintiles that are used to show growth only in the upper class does not refer to the same people over time. When you follow people over time, they generally move up into higher quintiles thus "getting richer." https://russroberts.medium.com/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-gains-from-… He also talks about "what happened in 1972" is more about demographic shifts due to divorce, single parent homes, and children leaving home sooner: https://cafehayek.com/2013/11/inequality-in-two-graphs.html

Funny that this comes up. Donald J. Boudreaux wrote an entry just earlier on the same topic in response to Akerlof and Shiller's recent book: http://cafehayek.com/2015/12/the-role-of-market-forces-in-protecting-a… There's also a bit of a double standard about how advertising is perceived. Banner ads, editorials and similar are frowned upon. Yet it's quite likely you'll interpret someone promoting a work in the comments section of a site you frequent as a friendly recommendation, never mind it's still signaling availability of something in a manner identical to many less invasive ads.

So I hope those skinflints do just raise the minimum wage a tiny bit. They need to raise it a lot. A minimum wage of $50.00 per hour would relieve a great deal of poverty. P.S. http://cafehayek.com/2014/01/the-wages-of-journalist-incompetence.html

Lest the Stiglitz bandwagon go wholly unchallenged, here's a great reply by Russ Roberts: http://cafehayek.com/2011/04/theres-no-their-there.html Since the link to the source of the (preconception shattering) intergenerational income graph he references is borked, here is a correct one: http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_GETTING_AHEAD_FULL…

I've enjoyed Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts' blog, for some time http://cafehayek.com/

In the same vein: https://cafehayek.com

To start off, "liberal" is hard to define, really. I identify as "classically liberal," but that can greatly differ from modern liberal, progressive, etc. Friedrich Hayek tried to answer this in the 40s, when "intellectuals" were into communism and eugenics (this video is not from the 40s obviously.) http://cafehayek.com/2014/10/hayek-on-intellectuals-and-socialism.html To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking. In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion. I do think there is a bit of a shift happening and that's many professors, etc standing up against "safe spaces" on campus. The irony of course is that many young people vouching for these areas often identify as liberal, but yet suppressing the ideas of others is anything but. So...you really have to be careful in how you define "liberal," as it appears the title is shifting a bit due to millennial deposition.

It's pretty easy to find research coming to a different conclusion than the Card/Kreuger paper that most pro-minimum-wage-increase people cite: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/06/sperling-on-minimum-wage.html http://cafehayek.com/2009/09/new-study-casts-doubt-on-card-krueger.htm… http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-which-i-disagree-with-paul-k… But the best reasoning I've seen on the subject is Bryan Caplan's: "Suppose you have a weak prior about the disemployment effects of the minimum wage. Suppose further that you think that the best empirical work in economics is very good indeed. Doesn't existing evidence then oblige you to admit that the minimum wage has roughly zero effect on employment? "Hardly. Why not? Because there is far more 'existing evidence' than meets the eye. Research doesn't have to officially be about the minimum wage to be highly relevant to the debate. All of the following empirical literatures support the orthodox view that the minimum wage has pronounced disemployment effects:" http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/the_vice_of_sel.html

How about a couple cartoons? http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/10/by-far-the-2-best-cartoons-about-the-… Seriously though, if you're determined to doubt the law of demand applies to the market for labor - as I suspect you are - then Don Boudreaux has some questions for you: http://cafehayek.com/2013/10/the-science-of-the-minimum-wage-debate.ht… (I can of course give specific EXAMPLES of people being denied work they would like (and that their employer would like to give them) because their productivity is too low to justify the minimum wage, but I suspect you'd just dismiss that as "anecdotal evidence". Is that what you want to see? Or if not, what would "data that explicitly shows this causation" have to look like for you to find it relevant?) Oh, and if you decide correlation data might be acceptable, I'd start with this report: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-427 (TLDR: in 2007 it was attempted to gradually bring the minimum wage in American Samoa up to the level in the rest of the US. The resulting hit on employment levels was truly impressive and hard to explain any other way than that setting the wage level above the market level destroyed jobs.)

Thank you for providing the only sane voice in this thread. Everyone who is from the first world country and who has never visited a third world country should stop talking about child labor. Now. Just stop it. It's very easy to bash child labor but do you know why the child labor exists in first place? Do you think parents of those child have any other alternatives? For their parents, it's a choice between living another day or dieing of hunger. For them, the so called 'abusive' work condition is the only option to survive. To give a little personal perspective, let me tell you my story. I am from India. And when I was 10 years old (in 1990), my mom took up some side work to support us. She would do it 7 days a week and I would do it in evenings and full day on Sunday. We did it not for food but to make sure that me and my sisters could go to school and get the books we need. It was back breaking work but it was worth for me and my family. I was lucky enough that I worked so that I can go to school. Few of my other cousins were not that lucky. They had to work so that they can eat in evening. Because of my education, I have been successful and have been living in USA for last 5 years. Those poor cousins are now grown up and doing an average job but they are doing everything possible to send their kids to school. I am sure their next generation will be much much better off. Before you decry child labor next time, ask yourself, what's the alternative for the child? Are you…

You are propagating a false narrative yourself. This narrative has itself been roundly refuted, which you decided to omit. See [0][1]. [0] https://cafehayek.com/2013/09/ritholtz-and-the-big-lie.html [1] https://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/RUSS-final.pdf

The claim wasn't that he committed plagiarism, it was that he lazily "repackaged" a blog post: http://cafehayek.com/2016/02/40405.html It's not plagiarism, but it's also not something a moderately talented high-schooler couldn't have done. I mean he even used the same food examples, the same real-estate examples, the same travel examples, the same home appliance examples...all he did is add some BLS stats.

Yes. http://cafehayek.com/2011/05/bennis-v-michigan-and-the-awful-advance-o… is also good.

This article supports many of the common fallacies that accompany most discussions of "wealth inequality" - and as usual believes it should be rectified... (by whom?) For a refreshing point of view on this topic, read http://cafehayek.com/2014/01/wealth-is-not-a-glob-of-homogenous-dough.… . It may not change your mind but it is certainly another way to think about the issue.

> they can't outsource their work to another, cheaper state They have done some of it for almost a decade http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?pagewanted=al… They can also use more automation - "outsourcing" to machines. There are far more subtleties that the article didn't cover as you partially point out. There is a good article on cafehayek about it. (eg the nature of work done can change). http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/again-more-on-the-minimum-wage.html

I'm guessing this is about Tyler Cowen's Average is over? (The site is down currently.) If so, there are other ways of looking at the same data that Cowen uses to determine, and then extrapolate, a trend of increasing inequality, http://cafehayek.com/2013/11/when-facts-arent-facts.html Russ Roberts (the author of the above piece) also interviewed Tyler Cowen on EconTalk where they discussed the case of compensation to (book) writers, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/tyler_cowen_on.html Cowen argues that superstars eat an ever larger share of the total compensation while Roberts notes that the average is being dragged down by the fact that there are few, if any, barriers to entry for new writers and writers who would have done well in the past (due to their talent, education, ability) still do well today.

All the more ironic that the next item in my feed reader is, "The Problem Began When the Invention of the Spear Reduced the Price of Food": http://cafehayek.com/2011/05/the-problem-began-when-the-invention-of-t… How fitting to this discussion.

Like most things in history: it's complicated. Generally, in a feudal system: yes, you had a job for life and that was that. How stable was that? Not very, as food is still 'variable' until the industrial revolution and the green revolution of the 1930s-1960s[0]. But starvation and epidemics are a bit orthogonal to the question of employment. Still, the skills and, importantly, the tools used were expensive to learn and teach. The feudal system, as done in Europe in the middle ages, is actually a result of just one man: Emperor Diocletian. His policies essentially ushered in feudalism as Europe knew it. He forbade the travel of skilled craftsmen, inadvertently encouraged the self sufficiency of large estates, and tried to fully regulate all prices in the empire. His early attempts gave Rome the Tetrarchy and yet more civil wars; essentially his efforts were total failures. He actually retired, a first, and went off to grow really big cabbages in modern day Turkey. Though many of his reforms flopped, the feudal system of 'jobs for life passed onto kin' did stick for about 1500 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [1] https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html

It just doesn't work that way in economics. Even worse, the reductionism in economics is unethical, because when it registered (somewhere) that humans are not "objective, utility-maximising spheres" they more or less started advocating that they /should/ be. That got us to "corporations are people" and 24-step daily checklists to "make better use of your time". It also made fast-food the superior choice (time is money!), so at least the "spherical" part is coming along. Some citations are clearly needed here. In particular about the normative claims you believe economics makes - as far as I know the field is very strictly positive [1]. Economists will say that fast food is better because people are choosing to consume it, and most of those same economists will discuss the topic over a lunch of artisinal kale salad locally grown by vegan hipsters. [1] There are cases where economists are clearly motivated by normative concerns to draw a particular positive conclusion - e.g. that the law of demand doesn't work for low skill labor. But that's a different critique. http://cafehayek.com/2016/12/41844.html

I don't see any such refutation in the OP. And our standard of living is obviously far higher than at any time in the past. Even given wage (lack of) changes, the access to more and better medicines, having at our fingertips the entire artistic output of the history of the world, safer and longer-lasting cars, longer life expectancy, ubiquitous and free to nearly-free instantaneous communication, ubiquitous good sanitation, refrigeration, lower crime rates, lower pollution, and on and on. I can't fathom how anyone can claim that virtually any American is better off than his counterpart from any time in the past. So let's do a thought experiment: can you pick a past time in USA history where you'd like to be transported, keeping everything else (such as your economic quintile) equal, where you'd be better off? Or forget about keeping things equal, would you rather go back a hundred years and be in John Rockefeller's shoes? There's a good argument to be made [1] that you're better off than he was. [1] http://cafehayek.com/2016/02/40405.html

People choose to believe (and to not believe) in all sorts of wacky stuff[1]. UFOs, Illuminati conspiracies, Rumpology... But when it come to not believing in scientific theories that are obviously standing the hard tests of the scientific method and that are making correct, testable predictions, well, it does become somewhat frightening at that point. Perhaps it's just social norming at work, and people find it easier to say whatever they need to continue to fit into their social cliques. TBH, I hope this is mostly the case, because at least then there is some method to the madness. Also, it's hard to not throw Hayek's Scientism[2] into the mix again here...for too long, perhaps, Researchers have attempted to apply scientific principles to area's of study that simply are not suited for such attempts, thus creating a generation of layperson's who are having much easier time dismissing anything that does not fit comfortably into their intuition due to often-flawed research. In any case, I am finding this same disheartening truth when I talk to people about some of the few solid findings that neuroscience has made about our decision-making processes, so I believe I have some direct, albeit minor, understanding of the issue. [1] http://listverse.com/2013/06/12/10-bizarre-things-people-believe-in/ [2] http://cafehayek.com/2011/12/hayek-on-scientistic-hubris.html