Labor, Jobs, and the Modern Economy | Becker Friedman Institute
20 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, industrial organisation, Joseph Schumpeter, labour economics, politics - USA, population economics, technological progress Tags: creative destruction
% Australian top incomes from wages, salaries and pensions since 1954
19 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - Australia, poverty and inequality Tags: Australia, CEO pay, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
Australia has had a working rich for a long time now. Australian top income earners are top wage earners. They are athletes, celebrities, business executives and in the professions.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
% US top incomes from wages, salaries and pensions, 1913 – 2015,
18 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, survivor principle Tags: CEO pay, entrepreneurial alertness, superstar wages, superstars, top 1%, top incomes
The rich in the USA long ago became a working rich; most top incomes are from wages and salaries.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
NZ top income earners as lazy as ever @MaxRashbrooke @CloserTogether
17 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality Tags: Leftover Left, pessimism bias, top 1%, top incomes, Twitter left
Max Rashbrooke was good enough to remind us that the 2013 update of New Zealand top income shares came online a few days ago.
As is well known to everyone except those obsessed with top income shares, New Zealand top income shares have not changed much since the late 1980s. They are now no higher than in the good old days when New Zealand was an egalitarian paradise in their eyes.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
% women age 25 to 54 working full-time in USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark
11 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in gender, labour economics, labour supply Tags: female labour force participation, female labour supply, part-time work, social insurance, taxation and labour supply
To account for full-time work being 35 hours per week in some countries but 40 hours others I have included both in the chart below. Not many Dutch women work full-time.
Data extracted on 11 Mar 2016 14:08 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.
Did Gary Becker invent the term human capital?
11 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in Alfred Marshall, Gary Becker, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics
..
Everything amazing now compared to 1946 but @jacindaardern not happy @dbseymour
10 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality Tags: The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape
Tertiary attainment of 25-34 and 55-64 year-olds across the OECD
06 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, macroeconomics Tags: endogenous growth theory, graduate premium
Some countries have experienced large increases in the number of young people graduating from University when compared to their parents. Germany and the USA aside, all countries have experienced a noticeable increase in young adults with tertiary degrees.
Source: Education at a Glance 2015 – © OECD 01-01-2015.
If human capital is such a major driver of economic growth, should not these countries with large increases in tertiary educated workers be anticipating a growth spurt? The gaps in tertiary attainment across the OECD are much less than they used to be for young adults. Ireland’s burst in tertiary educated workers was after the Celtic Tiger years, not before or during.
Source: Education at a Glance 2015 – © OECD 01-01-2015.
Child poverty in single parent and two-parent households in New Zealand
06 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of love and marriage, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty, single mothers, single parents
Looks like the greed of the top 1% was targeted exclusively as single parents since the 1980s. Child poverty in two-parent families has not risen much at all. These households often have jobs and will presumably be under the jackboot of neoliberalism stripping away their bargaining power through the decimation of unions and the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act. Despite these horrors, family poverty did not increase much if there are two parents in the house.
Source: Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015), Table H.4.
Bryan Caplan argues that there is an undeserving poor if they fail to follow the following reasonable steps to avoid poverty and hardship:
- Work full-time, even if the best job you can find isn’t fun;
- Spend your money on food and shelter before cigarettes and cable TV; and
- Use contraception if you can’t afford a child.
Average top incomes in New Zealand
05 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, top 1%
The average top income in New Zealand is that of a professional, executive or entrepreneur.
Source: The World Wealth and Income Database.
Where do ISIS foreign fighters come from and why?
04 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in defence economics, labour economics, occupational choice
ISIS foreign fighters are not driven by economic deprivation or inequality. In What Explains the Flow of Foreign Fighters to ISIS? (NBER Working Paper No. 22190),Efraim Benmelech
and Esteban F. Klor found that many foreign fighters come from countries with high levels of economic development, low income inequality, and highly developed political institutions.
Foreign ISIS recruits come largely from prosperous, ethnically and linguistically homogeneous countries. As Alan Krueger explains in a discussion of terrorism is an occupational choice:
One of the conclusions from the work of Laurence Iannaccone—whose paper, “The Market for Martyrs,” is supported by my own research—is that it is very difficult to effect change on the supply side.
People who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause have diverse motivations. Some are motivated by nationalism, some by religious fanaticism, some by historical grievances, and so on. If we address one motivation and thus reduce one source on the supply side, there remain other motivations that will incite other people to terror.
Malcontents join the jihadists today for the same reasons they joined the Red Brigade, the Japanese Red Army Faction and Baader-Meinhof gang in the 1970s and 1980s. Plenty of young people were attracted to communism in previous generations as a way of sticking it to the man.
Now as then economic conditions were good as were political freedoms. Italy, Japan and Germany were all at the peak of recoveries from war. Japanese incomes are doubled in the previous decade. Germany and Italy were rich countries. As Alan Krueger explains:
Despite these pronouncements, however, the available evidence is nearly unanimous in rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate education as important causes of support for terrorism or participation in terrorist activities. Such explanations have been embraced almost entirely on faith, not scientific evidence.
Each generation has its defining oppositional identity. Radical Islam is the oppositional identity of choice for today’s angry young men and women. Mind you, they have to buy Islam for dummies to understand what they’re signing up for.
In previous generations, it was communism, weird Christian sects, eco-terrorism, animal liberationist terrorism and a variety of domestic terrorists of the left and right with conspiratorial motivations. Look at the level of diversity of the angry young men and women on the domestic terrorists list of the FBI.
One jihadists when interviewed said that 30 years ago he would probably have become a Communist as his vehicle for venting his frustrations.
.@MaxRashbrooke kills case for #UBI @GrantRobertson1 @JordNZ
03 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics
Rashbrooke in the snap-shot quote describes the massive new taxes to fund a universal basic income as a policy shift for which middle New Zealand must be prepared properly over many years. But the purpose of these great big new taxes is to ensure that those with whom the modern welfare state was designed to protect our left no worse off, not better off, just as good as they were under the previous regime of social insurance. Why take that journey when you can target their poverty directly to the current welfare state?
Source: Is Labour really going to deliver a UBI? – Inequality: A New Zealand Conversation.
Wage gaps by gender, race and ethnicity persist in the USA
03 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: employer discrimination, ethnic wage gap, gender wage gap, racial discrimination, racial wage gap
Recent Comments