Can New Zealand blame distance for its economic woes alert: the global economic hub has been moving closer to us for at least 20 years
29 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, international economics Tags: burden of geography, New Zealand, New Zealand productivity performance, scapegoating
Pro-free enterprise does not mean pro-business
28 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of religion, liberalism, Milton Friedman, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Milton Friedman
George Stigler on the short rise and long fall of interpersonal comparisons of utility
25 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
What is the precariat?
24 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, rentseeking, technological progress, Uncategorized Tags: Leftover Left, precariat, The Great Act, The Great Enrichment, The withering away the proletariat
With the withering away of the proletariat because of the great enrichment, the Left over Left coined the word precariat.
The precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity: a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare as well as being a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labour to live. Specifically, it is applied to the condition of lack of job security, in other words intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence. The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.
Very similar to the Karl Marx’s Lumpenproletariat: the layer of the working class that is unlikely ever to achieve class consciousness and is therefore lost to socially useful production, of no use to the revolutionary struggle, and perhaps even an impediment to the realization of a classless society.
One of the drawbacks of the precariat is they are inconveniently happier than Left over Left are willing to give them credit. For example, a lot of women in part-time jobs are happier than those in full-time jobs because of the greater worklife balance. Casual and seasonal jobs pay more too.
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Too few good men – rational behaviour and the causes of teen pregnancies
21 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of love and marriage, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: teen pregnancies
Teenage pregnancy rates have been cut in half in the past 20 years. buff.ly/1PnIpdN http://t.co/1SIJeTeZjj—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) August 14, 2015
The causes of teen pregnancies are well described in Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’s Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage and Jason DeParle’s American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. See Amy Wax’s superb book review Too few good men.
Women on a low social trajectory see no reason to wait before having a baby and they look down upon those women that wait.
People now regard marriage as a luxury good rather than as a necessity. They refuse to tie the knot unless they have first achieved economic success. A house, a well-paying job, and enough money for a nice wedding are now needed before considering a trip to the altar.
These young women put motherhood first and have no intention of marrying the layabouts that often father their children, most of all, because of repeated and open infidelity.
The women do not complain of men’s failure to earn enough, but rather of their unwillingness to grasp opportunities, work steadily, and spend wisely. The objection is not to modest earning power, but to financial profligacy, defiant attitudes, and lack of work discipline…
The most vociferous complaints are reserved for men’s chronic criminal behaviour, drug use, violence, and, above all, repeated and flagrant sexual infidelity.
Most men made no effort to hide their frequent liaisons, which were often carried on simultaneously. More often than not, those relationships produced babies
Having a baby changes these young women from extras on the stage of life to a mother and all the community respect and social standing that commands.
Babies need not await the achievement of an elevated position in life, because childbearing is a fundamental hallmark of female adulthood that is central to poor women’s dignity and identity.
In the authors’ words, “women rely on their children to bring validation, purpose, companionship, and order to their often chaotic lives — things they find hard to come by in other ways.” In a perverse inversion of old values, these woman have come to regard lone motherhood as the ultimate heroic act, the proving ground of their responsible devotion to others.
These new mothers try and clean up their act. They stop drinking and taking drugs. For the first time in their lives they have a purpose, which is to raise a child.
Far too many social commentators see a teen pregnancy through their own lens as a middle class parent and the despair they would fell because their daughter will not go to university and all that brings including a better class of husband.
University educated couples are not called power couples for nothing – their earning power is this stunning compared to going it on your own. The emergence of power couples means that less educated women may prefer to stay single and raise children on their own rather than marry what is left in the marriage pool.
Henry Hazlitt on wise bureaucrats and farsighted politicians
21 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, entrepreneurship, liberalism, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: fatal conceit, Henry Hazlitt, pretence to knowledge
Bootleggers and Baptists alert: Mexican cannabis output falls in wake of legalisation
19 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economics of regulation Tags: black markets, bootleggers and baptists, decriminalisation of marijuana
Farmers in the storied “Golden Triangle” region of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, which has produced the country’s most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop.
Its wholesale price has collapsed in the past five years, from $100 per kilogram to less than $25.
“It’s not worth it anymore,” said Rodrigo Silla, 50, a lifelong cannabis farmer who said he couldn’t remember the last time his family and others in their tiny hamlet gave up growing mota. “I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.”
The people designing your cities don’t care what you want. They’re planning for hipsters. – The Washington Post
19 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, income redistribution, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: do gooders, elitism, land supply, new class, rent seeking, the vision of the annointed, zoning
HT: Michael Warby via The people designing your cities don’t care what you want. They’re planning for hipsters. – The Washington Post .
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