The decline of jobs in the U.S. steel industry has nothing to do with the rise of imports. The primary driver of declining employment is dramatic productivity gains in the industry, fueled by automation and changing steel production methods. A secondary cause is the long-term decline in the relative importance of steel to a modern, information driven economy.
George Will offers sound life advice to millennials. A slice:
In healthy societies, basic values and social arrangements are not much thought about. They are “of course” matters expressing what sociologists call a society’s “world-taken-for-granted.” They have, however, changed since President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed “unconditional” war on poverty. This word suggested a fallacious assumption: Poverty persisted only because of hitherto weak government resolve regarding the essence of war — marshaling material resources.
Sarah Burns celebrates colonial failures.
Bob Murphy writes about the private provision of roads.
Here’s Nicholas Cachanosky on minimum-wage research. (HT NtN) A slice:
In this post I want to focus just one empirical problem. An incomplete sample in itself may not be a problem. The issue is whether or not the observations missing from the sample are relevant. This problem has been pointed out before as the Russian Roulette Effect, which consists in asking survivors of the increase in minimum wages if the increase in minimum wages have put them out of business. Of course, the answer is no. In regards to Seattle, a concern might be that fast food chains such as McDonald’s are not properly included in the study.
