I love it when Greg Mankiw gets nasty.
Robert
Reich says that, as a requirement for free trade deals, we should tell
developing countries to "set a minimum wage that’s half their median wage." The
proposal raises two questions in my mind:1. Does Reich pay his nanny,
cleaning person, and gardener more than half the median wage of members of his
family?2. If not, should I refuse to buy his books?
It was one of the best zing’s i have read all day, too bad that it made me rather disappointed with Greg.
I read Robert Reich’s free trade post yesterday, and thought it had some interesting ideas. I was looking forward to seeing what people like N-dot had to say about it. I was hoping some some actually intellectual content, some debate, but we got a zing.
Oh well, maybe next time…
badger, I don’t think that’s right, at least unless Reich can also justify why a particular country is the right level of analysis.
The problem with the zinger – enjoyable though it may be – is that it doesn’t really dejustify Reich’s argument (which I personally find silly). Not living a principle you believe ought to be enacted into law says nothing whatsoever about the desirability of having that principle as law. Individual choice is made within the context of current institutions. If Reich acted contrary to the law he advocated passing AFTER IT WAS PASSED it would be a different matter entirely.
Nozick benefited from rent control laws.
And for that matter I drive on government roads though I’d much prefer they were private. That hardly means my arguments for toll roads are wrong.
Still, it’s funny.
And Reich is a disingenuous hack.
No, Aaron_Fix, the question shouldn’t be that. The other point of Alex_Tabarrok’s zinger was the
arbitrariness (arbitrarity?) of choosing the target country as the appropriate pool to compare min. wages to.
Why not the US? Why not Connecticut? Why not the administration of that country? Why not …
Robert_Reich’s family?
i dunno about reich, but my gardner owns a nice house. And I know a lot of people on the margin where their nanny’s salary + employment taxes is roughly equal to their after-tax second income. so i don’t think this zinger works.
He has a book?
Actually, the outsourced jobs tend to be very well paying jobs by the standards of the host countries. People upskill and then line up around the block to try to obtain these jobs. I don’t think any serious person denies this. They’re almost certainly well above the median.
Robert Riech is acting as a glib protectionist in this quote. I don’t see what case can be made that when a US company wants to pay relatively nice wages to some of the more desirable employees of a generally poor country, they should be forbidden to do so if the remainder of the employees of that country are too poor.
-dk
If I interpret the “zing” your way, Prof. Mankiw looks downright stupid.
Zing!
So does Reich pay his cleaning person less than half of what he pays his gardener?
Zing!
Alex Tabarrok lowers the intellectual level of this blog and, frankly, provides a disincentive for visits. Here he finds a delightful “Zing!” in what is a rare (and embarrassing) moment of silliness on the part of Professor Mankiw. I guess Tabarrok instantly recognizes his own style of blogging in Mankiw’s gaffe and thus approvingly links to it. For shame. Is there a way to alter settings so that I don’t see Tabarrok’s blog entries? I did the same at Volokh to avoid seeing David Bernstein’s inanity.
Does Greg Mankiw in fact know for certain that Robert Reich actually employs a nanny, cleaning person, and gardener?
grad student,
Grow up, then come back. All will be better then.
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