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The Death of Econ101 (Article Version) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-22 14:05:49
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hey everybody,  the new video will be out in early March, but for now I've written an article which refines and fleshes out some of the points I couldn't include in my video on the death of economics 101. I've stuck to the labour market, adding more on the minimum wage literature and a section on immigration.

I plan to publish it somewhere, probably Current Affairs, so any critical feedback is welcome. Articles on rent control and other econ101 topics like free trade will follow, eventually - after all, this one only took a year!

Files

Previews only

CA Article Labour.docx

The Death of Economics 101: Labour Markets It's common to hear "economics" used as a rhetorical weapon in political debates. US politician Paul Ryan once argued the minimum wage was "bad economics". Milton Friedman described the minimum wage as "about as clear a case as one can find of a measure ...

Comments

Drew

This is a banger article. One comment - you say that "'the demand curve slopes downwards' is an expression considered beyond repute by many economists" - I think you may mean "beyond reproach" and not "beyond repute", or perhaps I just don't understand what that expression properly means. Also, on the part where you talk about the US lagging behind other rich countries with its low minimum wage - if I'm reading the Minimum Wage/Median Full-Time Earnings chart properly, then I think the right wing comment on that would just be "well that just means that most people move past earning minimum wage, which is a good thing". Not sure if that point is worth addressing there, just something that popped into my head as I read it.

Stephen Kiazyk

Good article (though you'll want to give it a good proofread, I think I saw 'theory' where it should have been 'they', and 'ion' instead of 'in'). I appreciate your giving nuance to a topic that rarely receives any. Your point (or quote maybe, can't remember) about asking "what evidence would it take to refute your theory?" reminded me of a similar statement I read recently about someone engaging with flat-earth types. It feels like they kind of have a similar outline, where those defending a particular theory (or in this case, an insistence of said theory's absolute centrality) do so more because they don't like the implications of what else might be true or false, and how they might need to change if that theory is wrong, rather than any real interest in the theory itself. Always a good reminder to guard oneself against motivated reasoning.

Unlearning Economics
>>78404148

Your first comment is absolutely right, thanks for spotting. I think you may be reading the table wrong, though. It just expresses the minimum wage as a % of the median wage - like, if the median was $20/hour and the minimum wage were $5/hour, the number would be 25%. It doesn't tell us how many people are earning at the minimum wage, though it is probably related to the number is some way.

Unlearning Economics
>>78457158

Thanks for the corrections, yes it does need a final proof read for sure - hopefully CA will help :P One of the funny things about more knowledgeable economists is that they'll also do a motte and bailey: they know that you can't defend the introductory model (hence why there are courses beyond econ101) but they will in public. They just know that giving up demand and supply would do too much to their beliefs, as you point out.