A Walk-on Part in the Last War
I had written a fairly lenghty post about an argument Tyler Cowen excerpted from Daniel Klein, namely that minimum wage laws are coercive. I'll try to be more concise, because there are actually a lot of issues here that I don't need to get into.
Klein's argument is lengthy, and I've only read the segment quoted by Cowen. My reaction is basically the same as that of Cowen's first commenter - all laws are coercive, so this doesn't constitute an independent reason to oppose minimum wage laws (coercion is a cost that has been factored into our background understanding of law). In everyday life, though, coercion is seen as a bad thing. Thus, it's unsurprising that economists don't want to use the word, just as legal scholars prefer "anti-majoritarian" rather than "undemocratic" when discussing judicial review. Klein is (or seems to be) taking advantage of the difference between the literal meaning of a word and the feelings that it arouses in the casual observer. In another context, one of my professors has pointed out that divergences from absolute priority in bankruptcy have been given the label "deviations," which is literally true but is needlessly pejorative.
This might give us some traction on the James vs. Dave meta-economics debate. I think Dave is saying that people like Rodrik and (at a much lower level) me are using the Klein tactic. Literally, there are all kinds of ways free markets can malfunction, but in real life they're the best thing we have. The theoretical critiques are needlessly pejorative. I'm going to have to revisit all of this soon, but I really do think it comes down to what war you think you're fighting.
[UPDATE: Here's another example of needlessly pejorative treatment. The Washington Post criticizes John Edwards for not having fresh anti-poverty ideas. As Yglesias points out, so what? Why does freshness even matter? If it does, why has it been elevated above "smart"? I'd rather have a smart anti-poverty policy than a fresh one. It may be true that Edwards has no fresh ideas, just as it's true that in some sense minimum wage laws are coercive. It's just irrelevant.]
Klein's argument is lengthy, and I've only read the segment quoted by Cowen. My reaction is basically the same as that of Cowen's first commenter - all laws are coercive, so this doesn't constitute an independent reason to oppose minimum wage laws (coercion is a cost that has been factored into our background understanding of law). In everyday life, though, coercion is seen as a bad thing. Thus, it's unsurprising that economists don't want to use the word, just as legal scholars prefer "anti-majoritarian" rather than "undemocratic" when discussing judicial review. Klein is (or seems to be) taking advantage of the difference between the literal meaning of a word and the feelings that it arouses in the casual observer. In another context, one of my professors has pointed out that divergences from absolute priority in bankruptcy have been given the label "deviations," which is literally true but is needlessly pejorative.
This might give us some traction on the James vs. Dave meta-economics debate. I think Dave is saying that people like Rodrik and (at a much lower level) me are using the Klein tactic. Literally, there are all kinds of ways free markets can malfunction, but in real life they're the best thing we have. The theoretical critiques are needlessly pejorative. I'm going to have to revisit all of this soon, but I really do think it comes down to what war you think you're fighting.
[UPDATE: Here's another example of needlessly pejorative treatment. The Washington Post criticizes John Edwards for not having fresh anti-poverty ideas. As Yglesias points out, so what? Why does freshness even matter? If it does, why has it been elevated above "smart"? I'd rather have a smart anti-poverty policy than a fresh one. It may be true that Edwards has no fresh ideas, just as it's true that in some sense minimum wage laws are coercive. It's just irrelevant.]
posted by James | 11:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home