Economics

One of the places I look for blog material is the Post Everything section at the Washington Post, and one of the regular contributors is Jared Bernstein, who bills himself as "former chief economist to Vice President Biden," which doesn't sound like the kind of employment you'd want to brag about.Anyway, Bernstein has a post about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade … [Read more...] about It Helps To Get the Elementary Economics Right

I stumbled across an In These Times article by Amy Domini and Sofia Faruqi called "5 Ways To Reduce Inequality By Holding Corporations Responsible." It's pretty much the usual progressive game plan, but one particular sentence in the last proposal caught my eye (emphasis mine): 5. Help women to prosper: Women are twice as likely as men to work for minimum wage. The gender pay … [Read more...] about Equal Pay Won’t Help GDP

Somebody named Joe left a comment explaining that he didn't like my post about New York rent control. I was going to reply in the comments, but my response got long enough that I decided to make it a post. Normally, I do that when a commenter brings up interesting points, but in this case I wanted to point out some particularly annoying argument tactics. It's sad that, as soon … [Read more...] about It Helps To Have an Argument

While idling my brain on Twitter, I stumbled across Jordan Fraade promoting his Baffler article about how New York needs rent control. It's a little like discovering a grown-up who believes in fairies. For something that so deeply affects the workings of the city’s housing market, rent regulation in New York is widely misunderstood. At a recent event put on by the Pratt … [Read more...] about Clap If You Believe In Rent Control

Former Joe Biden chief economist Jared Bernstein has a piece up at PostEverything extolling the virtues of the $20/hour wage rate paid to McDonald's employees -- and other fast food workers -- in Denmark. The base pay for a fast-food worker in Denmark is $20, and the pay package includes considerable non-wage benefits, including five weeks’ paid vacation, paid maternity and … [Read more...] about The Unappreciated Virtues of Low Prices