In today’s “The Showoff Society” Paul Krugman continues to blame the drive for status among America’s most successful workers for abundant waste that yielded stagnant wage growth. Yesterday, he failed to recognize the drive for status fuels investment, risk-taking and innovation that helped spur U.S. job growth to twice the rate of Europe and three times the rate of Japan since 1980, and that the slowdown in wage growth likely resulted from open trade and immigration ... Read More
Data Show Pay Increased for Middle Class Workers Since 2000
An op-ed by David Cay Johnson points out that people earning between $100,000 and $400,000 per year captured “an astonishing” 75 percent of all (real) pay increases between 2000 and 2012. Twenty-two of those 75 percentage points stem from the fact that these workers earned 22 percent of the pay in 2000. So, all things equal, they would have earned 22 percent of any increase. The rest comes from 2.1 million people who had previously earned less than $100,000 joining their ... Read More
Americans Much Less Concerned about Inequality than Europeans
A survey released this month by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research finds Americans are much less concerned about income inequality than Europeans. Despite similar perceptions about the distribution of income as the Germans and French, only 30 percent of Americans believe “differences in income in [their country] are too large” versus 50 percent of the Germans and 70 percent of the French. Why might Americans be much less concerned about inequality? ... Read More
Does Economics 101 Apply to Immigration?
Robert VerBruggen, a writer for RealClearPolicy, has written a pithy summary of Harvard labor economist’s, George Borjas’, recently published tough-minded book, Immigration Economics. VerBruggen writes: “[Borjas] lays out evidence that [immigration] undermines the employment prospects of the Americans who need decent jobs the most. … High-school dropouts -- about 10 percent of the native U.S. population and 30 percent of immigrants -- often take a hit to their ... Read More
