How else can one title such a post? Here it is, from New York magazine. Excerpt:
Among this new crowd of economists, Cowen, a 45-year-old professor at George Mason University just outside D.C., is a cult hero, insofar as he co-runs an influential blog called marginalrevolution.com. You don’t need to be an economist to enjoy it. There are only a handful of posts a day, but the range of ideas is awe-inspiring. Cowen weighs in on everything from “wage compression”–when bosses give raises at a rate below productivity gains–to household pets, arguing that “if you must support the life of either a cat or a dog, choose the undervalued cat.” (Dogs’ friendly disposition increases the odds of their being well-cared for by other people, while the natural diffidence of cats makes them more susceptible to neglect).
Here is their selection from the series "My Favorite Things"…
I picked MR for a “five best” list a while back. . .
Please can we have a post on how you ended up having your portrait taken at Mars Bar in the East Village? Did they want to photograph you in a run-down place, and that bar was the most run-down place they could think of? Were you in the neighborhood anyway?
Wow, they even used the same word — polymath — to describe you.
What I want to know is, did your necktie just happen to get caught on the button of your jacket or is that the result of some sly styling by the photographer?
Nice article. Of course the bit on dishwashing reflects the
recent lit on counting on social norms versus punishing or
paying. So, in an Israeli kibbutz, when they started fining
parents for being late to pick up their kids, more of them
started being late. The social norm to pick them up had
broken down and been replaced by…a market.
Barkley you might be interested in what Ariel Rubinstein has to say about that Israeli daycare study.
The magic ingredient, he elaborates, is extreme income inequality, which ensures a large reservoir of cheap labor to grow and prepare the food, as well as a sufficient number of rich people who, being rich, must eat well. Voilà , good food in armored establishments.
Then, if you want great food countrywide, all you have to do is have open borders… the crime, and transition to latin-american style corruption in government, are a small price to pay.
But the fallacy is that cheap labor does not assure cheap products any more than expensive labor means expensive products. The relationship may or may not hold.
Pwyll,
You are right. Japan, New Zealand, Australia, France all have great food and very little of what you can call cheap labr.
Guess you have to believe the Neocons and assume that cheap labor cannot be substituted by capital goods–capital
does not have babies and send kids to school……..
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