David Frum Savages Charles Murray — And Rightly So
David Frum was excommunicated from the Righties Club a few years back because he insisted on occasionally saying sane and accurate things.
He continues that aberrational behavior today in his review of AEI uber-zealot Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (which I will not link to here — no Google love from me).
Frum’s takedown is so good that I won’t try to recap it. I’ll just comment on one quote that he provides from Murray (paragraph break and emphasis added):
Recall figure 2.1 at the beginning of the book, showing stagnant incomes for people below the 50th income percentile.** High-paying unionized jobs have become scarce and real wages for all kinds of blue-collar jobs have been stagnant or falling since the 1970s.
But these trends don’t explain why [working-class white] men in the 2000s worked fewer jobs, found it harder to get jobs than other Americans did, and more often dropped out of the labor market than they had in the 1960s.
It doesn’t? Doesn’t “textbook economics” — not to mention common sense — tell us that if you pay people less, they’ll have less incentive to work?
But Murray knows better — they’ve got plenty of incentive:
Insofar as men need to work to survive – an important proviso – falling hourly income does not discourage work.
As long people are reduced to the level of survival — so people have to take any available job, no matter how shitty or badly compensated, or die (along with their families and children) — it’s no problem getting them to work.
That takes a big load off my mind.
Cross-posted at Asymptosis.
Doesn’t “textbook economics” — not to mention common sense — tell us that if you pay people less, they’ll have less incentive to work?
No. There are two competing forces. One is less incentive. The other is that if I want to make $x to cover expenses,I’ll have to work more to make that much.
Murray: “Insofar as men need to work to survive – an important proviso – falling hourly income does not discourage work.”
Better than slavery, as they say.
It’s quite simple, really, let me lay it out for you Heritage Foundation-style:
Rich people really *are* different from the rest of us. They can ONLY be motivated by ever-more lavish compensation packages and benefits NOT tied to actual performance. And becuase the are Godly JOB CREATORS we cannot question those compensation packages, even when they are guaranteed by taxpayer bailouts. If threatened with genuine regulation or marginally higher taxes, these real-life John Galts will simply refuse to come to work, which will paralyze the entire world economy and lead to the Apocalypse in short order.
Poor/working-class scum, on the other hand, are only motivated to work by NEGATIVE incentives, like dying or suffering due to lack of healthcare, food, shelter, etc. Therefore, the closer compensation for the 99% is to the minimum cost of bare subsistence, the better! Having a welfare Socialist “safety net” only discourages them from working and provides no other societal benefit, so must be destroyed at all costs. That way, we lazy ignorant serfs can become more “competitive” with other Third World serfs.
Isn’t Murray also guilty of saying that a bunch of jobs went away, and those who have jobs have less to spend, but this doesn’t explain the unemployment? WTF?
What exactly are you complaining about? Yes, blue collar jobs have declined, while service and white collar jobs have increased. Median wages have risen at fairly stable rates (2-3%) for decades, even during the past 10 years, despite what you hear on TV.
You are obviously angry, but at what?
Bill
What exactly are you complaining about? Yes, blue collar jobs have declined, while service and white collar jobs have increased. Median wages have risen at fairly stable rates (2-3%) for decades, even during the past 10 years, despite what you hear on TV.
You are obviously angry, but at what?
Bill
WP Knabe – People do not all make median wages. Half make less than median wage.
“real wages for all kinds of blue-collar jobs have been stagnant or falling since the 1970s.”
I don’t think service job wages have increased, either. So you have a few people doing MUCH better while a LOT of people are no better off. The bottom 50% are falling behind because our laws and political environment have not been nearly as beneficial for them as it has been for the very wealthy.
This is unjust and it happens because the wealthy have become owners of our political process. That ought to make anyone angry.
Hmmm… so if *my* salary falls 50%, but the Koch Bros. increases 50%, we’re all better off?
Median tells us very little about the distribution of that income curve.
sadly, it’s not just wing nuts on the right advocating paying people less; seems to be a lot of the left trying to justify it too, here in this thread: “Lower wages can be a good thing“:
“Falling hourly income does not discourage work”? In what universe?
Knabe
you are obviously an idiot. but why?
let us suppose that knabe is “essentially” right.
wages for accountants go up and up so that all accountants can afford high end sports cars and high end call girls.
wages for apple pickers go down and down so that all apple pickers have to supplement their earnings by picking through the garbage that the accountants throw away.
knabe would argue that this is the “just” result of the free market… labor priced according to its “marginal productivity.”
i would say it was a sin and a shame. it’s also a tautology… and since i have seen it argued here that a tautology is a self evident truth, i need to say that no, a tautology is an empty self serving definition that excludes the truth.