Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 55

Technological Unemployment and Work

The state of technology and the unemployment rate look nothing like each other.  What about the state of technology and the labor force participation rate (LFP)?

Well, LFP doesn’t have massive spikes like the unemployment rate.  Since the state of technology doesn’t have massive spikes either, that eliminates one big discrepancy.

Otherwise, however, LFP and technology have almost nothing in common.  Technological progress is nonstop, but LFP rose for five decades, then started falling.

Disag...

Deadlock and Partisan Bitterness

Why does American politics seem so deadlocked?  The media mostly focuses on issues where Democrats and Republicans refuse to compromise because they strongly disagree: immigration, guns, health care.  But American politics often seems deadlocked even when both parties agree.  For example, supermajorities of both parties want to protect DREAMers, but they’ve never reached an agreement to do so.  How is this possible?

1. Transactions costs.  Hammering out a deal is hard work, so many mutually b...

Including the Renegade

In the last six months, I’ve found myself stuck in two separate Sermons on Inclusion.  These were public events.  Neither was branded as left-wing.  Both, however, gave the floor to speakers who explained the supreme value of making everyone feel included in the community.

In each case, my mid-sermon reaction was the same: “I don’t think I’ve ever before felt so excluded in all my life.”

Why would I react so negatively?  It’s not because I disagree with the one-sentence summary of the sermons...

Technological Unemployment: A Self-Test

Normal people worry about technological unemployment.  Economists keep telling them to relax, but to little avail.  You can’t trust a coven of eggheads, can you?

Rather than rehash the textbook arguments, let me propose an easy way for the public to test its own understanding.

Step 1: Create a graph where the x-axis runs from 1948 to the present, and the y-axis shows the overall level of technology.

Step 2: Sketch whatever you personally believe about the evolution of the overall level of tec...

What’s Historic?

I regularly read Wikipedia’s “Historical Events on This Day.”  It’s fun, and I learn new history.  But I’m still puzzled by the selection criteria.  Wikipedia casually blends three very different kinds of events:

1. Critical political, diplomatic, and military events that plausibly changed the lives of millions or even billions of people.

2. Terrorist attacks.

3. Natural disasters and major accidents.

“Historical events” for February 11, for example, include crucial events like the beginning...

We Wanted Tech

“We wanted workers, but we got people instead.”  This line from Max Frisch didn’t just give George Borjas the title of his most recent book.  At last Friday’s immigration conference in St. Cloud, Borjas declared it his all-time favorite immigration epiphany.  The point, he explained, is that immigrants aren’t just machines that produce stuff; they have broad social effects on our culture, politics, budget, and beyond.

Borjas is right, of course.  In fact, he doesn’t go far enough.  After all,...

Borjas and Me in Minnesota

This Friday, I’m speaking in Minnesota at St. Cloud University’s Winter Institute.  My topic: open borders.  George Borjas, probably the most respected critic of immigration in all of academia, appears earlier that morning.  I’ve only met him once before, but I’ve been commenting on his work for years.

P.S. If you’re there, please say hi!

The post Borjas and Me in Minnesota appeared first on Econlib.

Immigration and Redistribution: The Research to Trust

Evaluating the quality of research is laborious.  Unless you re-do the whole paper yourself, how do you know the authors were not only truthful, but careful?  Faced with this quandary, one of my favorite heuristics is to ask: Did the authors want to find this result?  If the answer is No, I put a lot more credence into the results.  In research as in the law, statements contrary to interest count more.

For example, when I learned that most economists find little effect of national education o...

The Mighty Difference Between Immigration and Trade

What’s so great about international trade?  Economist’s standard answer boils down to two words: comparative advantage.  Specialization and trade increases total production, even if one side is more productive across the board.  A textbook example starts with a table that shows hourly productivity in two countries, such as the U.S. and Mexico.

Table 1: Trade and Productivity

U.S. Productivity Mexican Productivity Cars/Hour 4 .1 Wheat/Hour 2 1

To see how specialization and trade rai...

A One-Page Hop from Bleeding Heart to Mailed Fist

Sometimes the hop from bleeding heart to mailed fist is only one page wide.  From Oscar Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon’s ethnography Four Men: Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba.

p.105:

Illiteracy is at the bottom of juvenile delinquency because illiterate parents don’t understand the development of the Cuban Revolution.  I’ve always been an enemy of slavery and illiteracy… My dearest wish is that every person, not only in Cuba but in the whole world, should know...