In Japan, you see native-born East Asians doing menial jobs everywhere you look. You see Japanese janitors, Japanese street-sweepers, Japanese convenience store workers, Japanese crossing guards, Japanese taxi drivers, and Japanese laborers on construction sites. 904 more words
Nine years ago, I critically analyzed the Cohen-Friedman debate on means-testing Social Security. Only recently, though, did I find the original footage from 1971. As far as I know, this is the first time that any prominent social scientist made the “A program only for the poor will always be a poor program” argument that…
Tomorrow at 2 PM ET, I’ll be debating “What is the best policy response to poverty?” versus Matt Bruenig. Venue: Econoboi channel P.S. You might recall that… 9 more words
What happened to the US labor market after the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act expired after the Great Recession?By Tyler Smith of The AEA. “In December 2013, when Congress failed to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, many prominent economists predicted a substantial decline in employment and labor force participation. In a paper in the American Economic Journal:…
Tweet… is from page 181 of the late UCLA economist William Allen’s superb 1989 collection of the transcripts of his radio addresses, The Midnight Economist; specifically, it’s from Allen’s April 1985 address “Employment and Wages, Competition and Fairness”: The more valuable the worker, the higher the bid for his services. The high wage offer reflects…
The US economy is the largest in the world, and at least among the large-population countries of the world (setting aside smaller economies strongly influenced by international capital flows like Monaco, Cayman Islands, and Ireland or by oil resources), it also has the highest per capita GDP. But at the same time, according to the…
The Supreme Court has ruled that four Uber drivers are employees of Uber, despite written agreements they are contractors, not employees. The practical effect of this decision is terrible. Uber has been great for passengers. Not only can we hold drivers to account through ratings, we save a lot of money. An Uber to the…
Roger Partridge writes – The Supreme Court’s Uber judgment (Rasier Operations BV v E Tū Inc [2025] NZSC 162) has delivered clarity of a sort. The Court dismissed Uber’s appeal, upholding the finding that the drivers involved in the proceedings are employees when logged into the Uber app. Yet the decision is deeply flawed. The Court […]
I’m still riding high after Javier Milei’s political party won a landslide in last month’s mid-term elections in Argentina. And I’m very much hoping and expecting that gives him enough legislative support to enact big reforms next year to further liberate the Argentinian economy (tax reform, free trade, and labor market liberalization). But let’s take […]
Honest leftists (the “Okunites“) generally acknowledge that laissez-faire policies deliver more growth, but they nonetheless favor high taxes and redistribution because they argue that social equality matters a lot. However, according to this chart, there’s a negative relationship between bigger government and social welfare indicators such as health, education, unemployment, and exclusion. Looking specifically at […]
The lobotomy of our time is over: NZ bans puberty blockers for kids Ani O’Brien writes – The government has officially announced that puberty blockers will no longer be prescribed to children for the purposes of gender transition. It’s one of the most significant and overdue reversals of reckless policy New Zealand has ever seen.
Eric Crampton writes – Yesterday [November 17], the Supreme Court ruled that Uber did not merely facilitate connections between four drivers and their various passengers – as Uber has maintained. And that the four drivers were not contractors for Uber either. Instead, those drivers were Uber employees while logged into the app.
In my own family, the reverence that we have for the dishwasher (and other time-saving devices) is such that we have a cat named “Josephine” after the Josephine Cochrane–the inventor of the first commercially viable dishwasher. (Also named because, as a kitten, she liked to forage in the back of the dishwasher.) Erin Braid provides…
Here we have the Triggernometry duo (Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster) questioning astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about his views on gender (the full interview is here). Tyson seems quite agitated, loud, and even patronizing, but largely misses the points that gender-critical people are making. For example, he begins with his infamous argument that sex (or gender; he…
The author is economist Jennifer Doleac, and the subtitle is A Revolution in Criminal Justice. Excerpt: We found that adding anyone charged with a felony to the law enforcement DNA database in Denmark reduced future criminal convictions by over 40 percent. Again, people responded to the higher probability of getting caught by committing fewer cimres. …
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
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