From pages 140-41 of Nobel laueate George Stigler’s 1988 autobigoraphy, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist:
I have recently reread it [F.A. Hayek’s 1944 book Road to Serfdom], and I simply cannot understand why it became popular. I mean this as a compliment to Hayek… Hayek has always been both a gentleman and a scholar.
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Posted in Books, Economics, Uncategorized
As the Democratic National Committee convention wraps up in Philadelphia, I took some time to look over theparty platform’s planks on inequality. Iain Murray and I counsel a “People, Not Ratios” philosophy on inequality in our recent study; the Democratic platform mostly takes the opposite approach.
Iain and I argue that from an ethical standpoint, the mathematical difference between rich and poor is irrelevant. What matters is making sure that all people, especially at the economic bottom, have enough to live comfortably and securely. The DNC platform instead is about ratios, ratios, ratios: “most new income and wealth goes to the top one percent (p. 3),” “the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined (p. 10),” and so on. Some of the policies it proposes to reduce inequality ratios include:
Progressives and classical liberals share the same goal when it comes to poverty—ending it. Achieving that goal requires people across the political spectrum to focus more on people, and less on ratios. In that respect, the DNC platform has a long way to go. The most effective policies involve eliminating barriers to entrepreneurship. These include reforming occupational licensing requirements that now affect a third of American workers, as President Obama has suggested. We also recommend clearing vast swathes of the 175,000-page Code of Federal Regulations. Other helpful policies include affordable energy, easy access to capital, and a commitment to an honest price system. For more policy ideas, see Iain’s and my recent papers.
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Posted in Inequality, Minimum Wage
I recently pointed out that minimum wage regulations increase inequality. That’s not what the “Fight-for-15” activists intend, but it is the result they would achieve. Collective bargaining is another unintentional inequality-increaser. The reasons why are pretty similar, as Iain Murray and I point out on pp. 10-14 of our recent paper, “The Rising Tide.” This week there were two opposing developments in Washington related to the issue: the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision that strengthens the hand of unions seeking to organize workers for representation via collective bargaining, but the House Appropriations Committee voted to defundrelated regulations from being implemented by both the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board.
Just as minimum wages benefit some workers, so does collective bargaining. Union members tend to earn higher wages than their non-union peers working similar jobs. And just as with minimum wages, these benefits come with tradeoffs. Fewer jobs for non-members, higher consumer prices, and more are all part of the collective bargain. Some people make more, because other people make less and pay more.
According to a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisors about declining labor force participation, the U.S. is in the 90th percentile among OECD countries when it comes to union-friendly labor policies. But is only in the 62nd percentile for entrepreneurship-friendly policies (p. 30). Those percentiles are a useful priority guide for policymakers.
Another CEI study by Ohio University economist Lowell Gallaway and researcher Jonathan Robe finds that in union-heavy states such as Michigan, per capita income is as much as $11,000 lower than what it could be without powerful unions and their exclusionary policies. That’s nearly $28,000 per year for an average-size household—money that could be spent on better schools, housing, food, clothing, and much else. Instead, that money is never made at all.
There is also evidence that many union members don’t even want to be members. When Wisconsin gave many government employees a choice on whether or not to join a union, many of them decided against unions. In a painful bit of symbolism, the very first AFSCME local, founded in Madison in 1932, saw its membership decline more than 85 percent within just a few years after the law passed.
Many politicians and activists want to reduce economic inequality, and collective bargaining is one of the most popular policies for doing so. But not only does it actually increase inequality—union benefits come at consumers’ and other workers’ direct expense—the proper goal is to make the poor better off. Iain Murray and I aim at that goal in our recent papers, “People, Not Ratios” and “The Rising Tide.” We encourage others to join us.
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Posted in Economics, Inequality
The minimum wage actually increases inequality. It helps some workers, but only at others’ expense. The reasoning is simple: people can’t make money if you put them out of work. When the minimum wage goes up, some people get a raise, but only because other people get their hours cut, are fired, or never hired in the first place. Some people get more, just as many other people get less. The minimum wage’s results are exactly the opposite of its intentions.
That’s why a recent Council of Economic Advisors report, “The Long-Term Decline in Prime-Age Male Labor Force Participation,” misses the mark. On page 42, the report says: “To fight the long-run trend of increasing inequality, the President has proposed raising the minimum wage, giving greater support to collective bargaining, and helping ensure that workers have a strong voice in the labor market.”
There are two problems with this approach. The big one is the implicit assumption that inequality is automatically a bad thing. This is precisely the approach Iain Murray and I warn against in our recent paper, “People, Not Ratios.” The mathematical difference between rich and poor is ethically irrelevant, as Princeton University philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt also argues.
What is ethically relevant is how people at the economic bottom are doing. Do they have enough to live with comfort, dignity, and security? Are they becoming better off over time? What policies will help the poor become better off over time? These are the questions anti-poverty activists should be asking.
That’s a pretty big problem. The second problem is with a study quoted on the same page by David H. Autor, Alan Manning, and Christopher L. Smith, “The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to US Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment.”
Economists are famously divided on many issues, leading to President Harry Truman’s wish for a one-armed economist, who would be unable to say “on one hand… on the other hand…” The minimum wage is not a two-handed issue. A survey of professional economists finds overwhelming support for the statement “A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers.”
So not only did the CEA report have to cherry-pick a study that supported its ideological priors, that study’s support is tepid at best. This may be why the CEA report does not bother to quote it directly, which I do here:
We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distribution, though by substantially less than previous estimates… These wage effects extend to percentiles where the minimum is nominally nonbinding, implying spillovers.
For more on how the minimum wage affects inequality, see Iain Murray’s and my recent paper, “The Rising Tide.” A future post will make similar arguments about the CEA report’s arguments on collective bargaining.
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Posted in Economics, Inequality, Minimum Wage
New Energy Department standards for dehumidifiers promise massive benefits. Depending on which set of numbers you prefer (the link goes to the Energy Department’s own numbers), they will cost somewhere between $110 million and $190 million annually. Estimated annual benefits range from $2.0 billion to $3.6 billion. If these numbers are accurate, this regulation will cause a net benefit to consumers between 18- and 19-fold.
Not 18 or 19 percent, mind you, but 18- or 19-fold. That’s 1,800 or 1,900 percent. The stocks that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average yield returns of around 8 percent, or 1/225th as much. The U.S Department of Energy, according to the U.S Department of Energy, can create some very impressive returns.
Which brings up an obvious question: Why not just have the Energy Department run the entire economy?
The reason is that entrepreneurs in every sector of the private economy constantly have their ideas put to a profit-and-loss test. The Energy Department only obeys political winds, which blow differently from year to year. Private entrepreneurs must create value for other people; political entrepreneurs need only create value for the right people.
Despite the massive improvement in living standards that entrepreneurs’ market-tested betterment has brought to most of the world for two centuries and counting, they have only brought a 2 or 3 percent rate of growth over that long time, on average. The Energy Department promises 1,800 percent. That is at least 600 times as much as market-tested entrepreneurs, and 225 times as much as the mercenary Dow Jones.
Again: if Energy Department officials are smarter than entrepreneurs, to the point of being able to earn a 225-fold greater return—why not have the Energy Department run the entire economy? Why don’t Energy Department officials enter the private sector, where their ideas could make enormous profits, and do enormous social good?
As Deirdre McCloskey asked many years ago, “If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich?” These are serious questions which deserve serious answers. Energy Department officials could learn much from her intellectual humility.
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Posted in Economics, regulation, The New Religion
Regular readers know that Iain Murray and I recently released a pair of papers on economic inequality, People, Not Ratios and The Rising Tide. I had the opportunity to sit down with RealClear Radio Hour‘s Bill Frezza to discuss them while in DC recently to attend CEI’s annual dinner.
My segment was sandwiched between Clemson University economist Bruce Yandle, of Baptist and Bootleggers fame, and Steve Forbes. I deserve no place on such a billing, and can only consider it an honor.
The show, as aired, is here. Yandle and Forbes, as always, are essential listening.
An extended version of my segment is here.
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Posted in Economics, Inequality, Media Appearances
The Senate’s main business right now is the annual Defense Appropriations bill. The Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im for short, might become part of that bill. Ex-Im caused one of the most contentious political fights in recent years. While the fight seemed over when Ex-Im re-opened last December after a five-month shutdown, there is still one more bit of drama to be resolved. That might happen this week.
Ex-Im is currently unable to make transactions larger than $10 million—essentially neutering an agency that does nearly 80 percent of its business in big deals with a literal top-ten of big businesses such as Boeing, General Electric, Caterpillar, and a handful of others. But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who counts Boeing as a constituent, is trying to restore cronyism as usual at Ex-Im.
A bit of background: Ex-Im offers loans and loan guarantees to foreign buyers of U.S. products. For example, Ex-Im will guarantee loans that a foreign airline takes out—if the airline buys its jets from Boeing instead of Airbus.
For a number of reasons, free-market activists want to permanently close Ex-Im. These range from numerous corruption scandals to the harm Ex-Im does to other U.S. businesses, such as domestic airlines that compete with Ex-Im-subsidized foreign airlines.
Last year Congress refused to renew Ex-Im’s charter, which expires every few years. Ex-Im actually closed for five months, able to do nothing more than maintain its existing portfolio. It reopened when Ex-Im’s supporters succeeded in placing its reauthorization in a must-pass spending bill.
But their victory was a partial one. Ex-Im has a five-member board of directors that must approve any transaction larger than $10 million. As directors’ terms expired during the shutdown, the board was down to two members.
Here’s where the fun begins: Any vote on a $10 million-plus transaction has a quorum requirement of three members—meaning Ex-Im, though open for business, can only perform relatively small transactions until it gets more board members. These require Senate confirmation, and the Senate has shown no interest in considering any nominees.
Enter Sen. Graham, and the current controversy. He is threatening to create a loophole large enough to drive a truck through. If the president decides a $10 million-plus Ex-Im project has national security implications, Sen. Graham proposes giving the president the power to override Ex-Im’s quorum rule, allowing Ex-Im’s current diminished board to approve it.
We all know how creative politicians can be when it comes to tying anything and everything to national security. No doubt Boeing, which typically receives about half of Ex-Im’s business, will work very hard to push as many of its potential loan guarantees as possible through that loophole.
The worst part is that Sen. Graham isn’t pushing this idea as a stand-alone bill that could succeed or fail on its own merits. He is trying to fold it into the must-pass Defense Appropriations bill, which even Ex-Im’s fiercest opponents have to vote for.
What to do about it? Sen. Graham’s proposal is in an amendment he is offering to the defense bill, which is still in the Committee phase. So either the amendment must fail, or another senator must offer a counter-amendment to nullify the Graham amendment. The defense bill is in markup this week, so we could find out soon if Ex-Im’s cronyism will return to its previous vast scale.
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Posted in Economics, Export-Import Bank, Trade
I recently spoke to a reporter about the minimum wage’s tradeoffs: it helps some people, but at the cost of hurting other people. Here’s the writeup.
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Posted in Economics, Media Appearances, Minimum Wage
CEI recently released a pair of papers by Iain Murray and me about economic inequality. The first encourages activists to ask the right questions: think about flesh-and-blood people, not ratios. The second paper seeks to answer the right questions. Our main focus is on effective poverty reduction policies. But it is also important to know which policies don’t reduce poverty, so policy makers can avoid them. We mention two in our paper: minimum wage hikes and increased collective bargaining.
The arguments against both are similar: they have tradeoffs. Some workers benefit from a higher minimum wage, and many union members benefit from higher union wages. But their benefits come at a cost.
Workers pay for minimum wage increases in the form of reduced hours, firings, some workers never being hired in the first place, higher youth unemployment, and reduced on-the-job perks ranging from paid vacation to free parking and meals. These costs to people must be weighed against the benefits other people receive. Whether they are worth it or not is a decision every individual must make for himself, and is open for debate. That these tradeoffs exist is not debatable.
Collective bargaining’s costs include higher consumer prices, along with lower wages and reduced purchasing power for other workers. Public sector unions impose massive costs on taxpayers through their pension obligations. They are major contributors to potential government bankruptcies in coming years from California to New Jersey. Again, some workers do benefit from collective bargaining. And it is every individual’s own decision if the tradeoffs worth it or not. But the tradeoffs exist.
There are many policies that instead can make the poor better off, from affordable energy to occupational licensing reform, to easy access to capital, to regulatory reform, a CEI specialty. But some policies do not help the poor—or if they do help some of the poor, the tradeoffs eliminate net gains in human well-being. Minimum wages and collective bargaining are two such policies. Well-meaning activists should approach them with caution.
For more, see Iain’s my new paper, The Rising Tide: Answering the Right Questions in the Inequality Debate, as well its companion paper, People, Not Ratios: Why the Debate over Income Inequality Asks the Wrong Questions.
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Posted in Economics, Inequality, Minimum Wage
Economic inequality is one of today’s defining issues. How to address it? Iain Murray and I offer an unconventional approach in a new two-part CEI study, released today. The first part frames the issue. The title sums it up well enough: People, Not Ratios: Why the Debate over Income Inequality Asks the Wrong Questions. The second part,The Rising Tide: Answering the Right Questions in the Inequality Debate, outlines a concrete policy agenda to make the poor better off.
Anti-poverty activists routinely fret about the ratio between a CEO’s salary and her lowest-paid employee’s, or how the top one percent’s ratio of national income compares to the bottom one percent’s. Instead of mathematical ratios, we encourage activists to focus on human beings. Again, we plead: focus on people, not ratios.
Ratio-obsessed activists from Thomas Piketty to Naomi Klein ignore some obvious questions due to their monomania:
We seek to fill these disappointing gaps. According to nearly all available data, poor people are better off than ever before in human history—keep at it, then! There is still lots to do, but ignoring the accomplishments people have already made, and what can make more accomplishments possible, only hurts the poor.
Over the course of the 20th century, infant mortality went down by more than 90 percent—just think of how many parents’ broken hearts have stayed whole thanks to modern technology and sanitary practices.
Life expectancy improved by 30 years during the 20th century. And that’s not the only type of length modernity has improved: from 1900 to 1950, the average American became three inches taller, thanks to better nutrition, food security, and health care. The process has only continued since then.
Even if it was only the top one percent that enjoyed zero infant mortality, lived a hundred years, and were all seven feet tall, their best efforts could not bias society-wide statistics nearly that much, despite their most conspiratorial plutocratic efforts. This is what mass prosperity looks like.
According to the Swedish economist Max Roser, since 1960 the number of people living in absolute poverty has declined from nearly two billion to about 700 million—a two-thirds decline. And this happened as total world population more than doubled! This is good news. Today’s most important task is to keep this great enrichment going, and to eliminate absolute poverty altogether.
The poor will never have as much as the rich—every curve has a bottom and a top ten percent, and always will. No changing that. But only the hardest heads deny that most poor people today live better lives than their parents or grandparents did—and that future generations can expect this wonderful trajectory to continue, if they’re allowed to.
This is both a reason to celebrate, and a reason to double down. Now that we haveasked the right questions about inequality, the second part of our study, The Rising Tide, seeks to answer them: what policies can continue to make the world’s poor better off?
There are a lot of answers. We don’t pretend to have all of them, but we offer a few. One is an honest price system: runaway-inflation countries such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela are universally poor. Keeping inflation in check and making sure prices convey honest information will help consumers and entrepreneurs make wise decisions that create value for people.
Affordable energy is another answer, allowing everything from clean home heating (natural gas is somewhat cleaner than dung and logs, especially indoors) to more and better transportation choices, which expands employment options.
Any aspiring entrepreneur needs access to capital—Dodd-Frank-style financial regulations openly insult every person trying to escape poverty. So do many governments’ resistance to granting formal property rights to their people.
Another answer—there really are a lot of them, and no single panacea—is occupational licensing reform. There is no legitimate reason for an interior decorator or a hair-braider to undergo hundreds of hours of training in something they already know how to do, in order to do for pay something they can do for free. Nearly a third of American workers require government permission to begin their day’s work. That is ethically wrong, and should be immediately reformed.
Inequality is a complicated issue. Properly addressing it requires both asking and answering the right questions. Ask how real-world people are doing, not abstract income ratios. And ask about policies that can help people escape poverty. The answers are numerous, and Iain’s and my papers do not pretend to have all of them.
But, we humbly submit, a general ethos of not stamping down on impoverished hands would be a good start. It would also be quite a change from current policy in the U.S. and many other countries.
For more, see our papers, People, Not Ratios: Why the Debate over Income Inequality Asks the Wrong Questions, and The Rising Tide: Answering the Right Questions in the Inequality Debate.
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Posted in Development Economics, Economics, Inequality, Monetary Theory, Price and Wage Controls, Publications
Inertia Wins! 