Adam Ozimek correctly explains that there are no losers from free trade. (It’s not a Pollyanna-ish claim; it’s accurate – as I, I vainly boast, pointed out, for example, in this EconTalk podcast with Russ about eight years ago.)
The notion that minimum-wage induced disemployment is a social benefit distinguishes its progressive proponents from their neoclassical critics, such as Alfred Marshall (1897), Philip Wicksteed (1913), A.C. Pigou (1913) and John Bates Clark (1913), who regarded job loss as a social cost of minimum wages, not as a putative social benefit (Leonard, 2000).
(The more you learn about the effects and the history – both political and intellectual – of minimum-wage legislation, the more you understand that it is a vile evil masquerading as sound social policy – a bloody-toothed, merciless wolf dressed and bleating like a sweet sheep in order to cajole its victims to welcome it into their midst. I link again here to my colleague Tom Rustici’s fine review of this pernicious policy in the U.S.)
Do you think cops are to be trusted to protect us from vice? Think again. (Warning: very graphic.) (HT Methinks)
My old classmate and dear friend Sandy Ikeda is correct: science is incompatible with politics.
Guess who attended a low-cost private school? (Jim Tooley has the answer.)
