Forum
Alan Krueger; expert on unemployment
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deadcode wrote
at 12:13 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT
Goolsbee jumped ship; so Obama had to appoint a new top economist. He is praised by the administration as an expert in unemployment...
I have never heard of the guy; so I have no idea. This quote from his wikipedia entry is disconcerting though... "Krueger compared restaurant jobs in New Jersey, which raised its minimum wage, to restaurant jobs in Pennsylvania, which did not, and found that restaurant employment in New Jersey increased, while it decreased in Pennsylvania." (Bonus points if you can explain how the above is economically possible) |
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deadcode wrote
at 12:13 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT (+ without outside influence)
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dasfury wrote
at 12:41 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT It is because gas stations are full service in NJ. Duh.
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MadHat_Sam wrote
at 12:46 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT Goolsbee's interview on The Daily Show a couple days before his last day in DC is hilarious.
All economic schools aside, the problem with the country isn't Keyens vs Hayek, it is logic vs politicians. No matter what you want to do that would actually help the US economy, 95% of the politicians and bureaucrats in DC will damn well go to the grave trying to stop you from doing it. |
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MadHat_Sam wrote
at 12:48 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT "Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling"
From "Stranger in a Strange Land" Robert A Heinlein |
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mr Kreuzfeld wrote
at 3:56 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT btw, it was fast food resturants, not resturants
deadcode, you should really read the explanation for why it happend; from that same new york times article " Why should bosses hire more workers if it's more expensive to do so? The two economists speculate that any fast-food restaurant typically operates with a couple of vacancies it can't fill because it doesn't pay enough. 'If you raise the minimum a little,' said Professor Card, 'teens who are sitting home go out looking for jobs.'! " so his basic explanation was that the teens didn't wanna work for that wage. (my own thought) maybe the people who ran the resturants got bigger profit from being understaffed, in the short term, and maybe the entire jobtype is underpriced,but the wages are controlled centrally. but the main thing of the article is that krueger actually advocates for testing the hypotisis of economy, instead of working with models that are only thought- experiments. |
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miguel30 wrote
at 5:40 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT Wait... Dead didn't read up on something before he jumped to conclusions?!? INCONCEIVABLE!
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deadcode wrote
at 5:47 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT MrK; I'm just quoting Wikipedia; but I found the NYT article you are talking about and read it.
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deadcode wrote
at 5:48 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT Don't feed the trolls
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deadcode wrote
at 5:51 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT Yeah I see the part about models vs actual experiments. However there is a good point for using models to form theories. You can control the variables.
In the real life example of the McDonalds; sure it could be increase demand for the job because of the wage increase; but it also could be a million other things; including increased advertising and advocating for these jobs because of all the controversy around the enactment of the increase. |
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deadcode wrote
at 5:52 PM, Monday August 29, 2011 EDT Hayek actually wrote about this experiment; I found: http://books.google.com/books?id=zL7SbWziUpgC&pg=PA385&lpg=PA385&dq=Milton+Friedman+on+alan+krueger&source=bl&ots=GgjttExu3v&sig=i9DkqRVyRdKSrJ2_aIIENky8hq8&hl=en&ei=GRhcTpP5Gors0gHd6pWUCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Milton%20Friedman%20on%20alan%20krueger&f=false
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