By Donald J. Boudreaux There are three ways that a worker – call him Joe – can legitimately be said to be underpaid. One way – the way that is identified in modern economics textbooks – is for Joe’s pay (wage plus fringe benefits) to be below the value of his marginal product (“VMP”). If Joe is one of four janitors employed by Acme Inc. and is – like his co-workers – paid … [Read more...] about Three Ways that Workers Can Be Underpaid
Daniel Boudreaux
The Way Not to Fix Education, Housing, and Health Care
By Daniel J. Boudreaux As long as the reality of human existence remains on the imperfect side of paradise — mired in scarcity, often unpredictable, and always carrying at least a small risk of calamity for each individual as well as for groups — some people will complain about the state of reality. Indeed, as human welfare improves, such complaints grow more frequent and … [Read more...] about The Way Not to Fix Education, Housing, and Health Care
How Minimum Wage Laws Are Like Poll Taxes
By Daniel Boudreaux Here’s a letter to Mr. Eddie Ng: Mr. Ng: Thanks for your e-mail. You find my colleague Dick Wagner’s case against the minimum wage “weak.” Without offering a reason for your objection to his argument, you ask why you should “believe that the minimum wage causes unemployment.” I urge you to explore the vast empirical literature on the actual … [Read more...] about How Minimum Wage Laws Are Like Poll Taxes
In Praise of an Ideology of Freedom
By Daniel J. Boudreaux In a recent EconLog blog post, Alberto Mingardi justly praised Tyler Cowen’s latest book, Big Business. In that post, Mingardi favorably quotes, directly from Cowen’s volume, this passage: “So many of the problems with business are in fact problems with us, and they reflect the underlying and fairly universal imperfections of human nature. Yet we … [Read more...] about In Praise of an Ideology of Freedom