Ed Conard debates middle-class economics with A Martínez, Jim Tankersley, and Isabel Sawhill on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show." http://downloads.wamu.org/mp3/dr/16/09/r1160915.mp3 ... Read More
A Proposal For Accelerating Middle Class Incomes
New York Times by Edward Conard September 19, 2016 When manufacturing jobs are outsourced, economists believe that opportunistic entrepreneurs will race to employ displaced workers and competition will raise their productivity and wages. But high-tech entrepreneurs have moved to large cities and outsourced their blue-collar jobs to China, while the engineers who remain behind now design products that employ offshore workers. This brain drain slows low-skilled ... Read More
My New Book “The Upside of Inequality” Is Out Today
My new book The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class (Portfolio/Penguin) is out today. Leading economists Greg Mankiw, Glenn Hubbard, Larry Lindsey, Tyler Cowen, & David Autor, have spoken highly of the book. Even Larry Summers admits it’s “a very valuable contribution” that will “sharpen your thinking on critical economic issues.” Buy a copy, write a review, or follow me at www.EdwardConard.com/Action ... Read More
Do German Vocational Apprentices Earn More Than Their American Counterparts? I’m Skeptical
Somin’ don’t smell right with Ed Lazear’s claim in Friday's WSJ that “Germans with vocational apprenticeships are considerably better off than their American counterparts.” A graph in the NYT shows all but the lowest 30% of Americans earn more than their German counterparts. (People in the bottom 30% don’t work much, so differences in incomes are not simply a matter of wages.) America achieves these across-the-board results despite substantially less vocational ... Read More
Low-Wage Workers are High-Cost Workers
If low-wage workers were low-cost workers, they wouldn’t be the last workers hired and the first ones fired—quite the opposite. Eric Morath and Julie Jargon of The WSJ report that the pay of the lowest-paid workers is finally beginning to rise faster than median pay—evidence that the economy is growing relatively more willing to employ these workers again. The last time that happened was during the 2006 to 2008 economic peak when employers had nowhere else to turn for ... Read More
Greg Mankiw Recommends My New Book “The Upside of Inequality”
Greg Mankiw recommends my new book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class (Portfolio/Penguin). In a knowledge-based innovation-driven economy constrained by properly trained talent and the economy’s willingness to take risk, rather than labor or capital, I recommend recruiting ultra-high-skilled immigrants, containing perennial trade imbalances, and lowering taxes on exporters. Pre-order a copy here. ... Read More
No Surprise, Scandinavians Earn Much More in U.S. Than Homeland (Tyler Cowen)
My upcoming book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine The Middle Class, quotes from statistics updated in Nima Sanandaji’s just-released book, Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism. Tyler Cowen reports: "Danish-Americans have a measured living standard about 55 percent higher than the Danes in Denmark. Swedish-Americans have a living standard 53 percent higher than the Swedes, and Finnish-Americans have a living standard 59 ... Read More
