Economists as seen by labor.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/arindrajit-dube-on-wages
It was amusing to read this while a foreman in the background working in the SDSU parking garage yells “Pour more concrete!” “Stop checking your damn phone and get to work” “Love you”.
It makes for getting a sense that these people live and research in libraries. And they create experiments on labor. Although with decent intentions. Here’s the dialogue. Imagine you’re one of the subjects of those experiments whether working at a fast food restaurant or at Target / Walmart (both are mentioned as comparisons). You read this and you want to create experiments yourself. On the wages of economists. Surely UM Amherst doesn’t pay as well as Princeton University or Berkeley. Well why not? Is it a case of competence? It it a case of better speech capacity? Bloodline maybe? One gets the distinct sense that they’re still pussyfooting around the main system and systematic issues.
If there is ever an “eat the cake” moment in America, remember not all economists were of ill intent.
Some tried their best. Within the constraints they imposed on themselves.
Paul Krugman: One of the most satisfying parts of economics, which doesn’t get as much attention as it should, is labor economics. It’s obviously important. Most of us work for a living, or at least pretend to work for a living. But also it is a field, a subfield you might say; more scientific than almost anything else in economics, really evidence-based. You’ve had multiple revelations where the data have actually changed the way people, myself included, have thought about stuff. And among the most effective, prominent practitioners of modern labor economics is Arin Dube, who has a new book called The Wage Standard. And I thought we’d take a break from all the other stuff going on and talk about Arin’s work. So hi, Arin.
lol
And it just gets better from that. To the men and women and whatever of labor, there isn’t much outside of labor economics. It’s not that important. Don’t worry about it.
Sorry for the video joke on the Labor Party. YouTube simply couldn’t help himself.
The space between glitches. Between the spoken and the unspoken. Read between the lines.
There are no lines. There is only labor.
