Peter Frase has an excellent post today about the way media outlets frame so-called labor shortages. According to theorists of the free market, when a certain employer or industry can no longer attract workers at a certain compensation level, that employer or industry needs to offer more compensation. There is no labor shortage in such… Continue reading The myth of jobs Americans wont do
How money dominates Congress
It has become a cliche of sorts to say that money dominates Congress. Lobbyists, donors, and Super PACs saturate the political environment and the rhetoric surrounding it. Although we all seem to know that money runs the government, very seldom does someone explain precisely how it does so. This weeks episode of This American Life,… Continue reading How money dominates Congress
Locke’s Christian property system
Modern-day libertarians love to pretend John Locke is on their side. But they do so erroneously. I am not sure whether their error comes from anachronistic interpretation, not actually reading Locke, or intentional distortion, but for some reason, procedural justice libertarians often trot out Locke as being one of them, despite overwhelming textual evidence to… Continue reading Locke’s Christian property system
A few more notes on student debt
I left some things out of my previous post on the politics of student debt. First, there are a variety of other ways to use means-testing to help poor kids afford college. One way to do so is through price discrimination, something many private schools already do. Private schools have very high sticker prices for… Continue reading A few more notes on student debt
Unemployment is really painful
Binyamin Appelbaum at the New York Times compiled a substantial amount of research on the effects of unemployment. Unemployed persons tend to make far less once they regain employment, suffer negative health effects, lose their skills, and find it increasingly difficult to regain employment at all. I surveyed a variety of similar studies not too… Continue reading Unemployment is really painful