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In Short, What The Living Wage Is Really About Is Not Living Standards, Or Even Economics, But Morality. Its Advocates Are Basically Opposed To The Idea That Wages Are A Market Price-determined By Supply And Demand, The Same As The Price Of Apples Or Coal. And It Is For That Reason, Rather Than The Practical Details, That The Broader Political Movement Of Which The Demand For A Living Wage Is The Leading Edge Is Ultimately Doomed To Failure: For The Amorality Of The Market Economy Is Part Of Its Essence, And Cannot Be Legislated Away.

-Paul Krugman

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In Short, What The

Paul Krugman

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In Short, What The Living Wage Is Really About Is Not Living Standards, Or Even Economics, But Morality. Its Advocates Are Basically Opposed To The Idea That Wages Are A Market Price-determined By Supply And Demand, The Same As The Price Of Apples Or Coal. And It Is For That Reason, Rather Than The Practical Details, That The Broader Political Movement Of Which The Demand For A Living Wage Is The Leading Edge Is Ultimately Doomed To Failure: For The Amorality Of The Market Economy Is Part Of Its Essence, And Cannot Be Legislated Away.

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Surely I'm Not The Only Person To Ask The Obvious Question: How Different, Really, Is Mr. Madoff's Tale From The Story Of The Investment Industry As A Whole?

Friedrich Hayek Is Not An Important Figure In The History Of Macroeconomics.

The Fact Is That The Two Years Or So After 9/11 Were A Terrible Time In America – A Time Of Political Exploitation And Intimidation, Culminating In The Deliberate Misleading Of The Nation Into The Invasion Of Iraq. It’s Probably Worth Pointing Out That I’m Not Saying Anything Now That I Wasn’t Saying In Real Time Back Then, When Bush Had A Sky-high Approval Rating And Any Criticism Was Denounced As Treason. And There’s Nothing I’ve Done In My Life Of Which I’m More Proud.

Approval Rating

Outrageous Fiscal Mendacity Is Neither Historically Normal Nor Bipartisan. It’s A Modern Republican Thing.

The Trouble With Poverty, As An Issue, Is That It Has Basically Exhausted The Patience Of The General Public.

Political Figures Who Talk A Lot About Liberty And Freedom Invariably Turn Out To Mean The Freedom To Not Pay Taxes And Discriminate Based On Race; Freedom To Hold Different Ideas And Express Them, Not So Much.

But Wall Street People Are In Fact Very Smart; They're Funny, They're Not Company Men Who Work Their Way Up The Chain.

I've Always Believed In Expansionary Monetary Policy And If Necessary Fiscal Policy When The Economy Is Depressed.

Monetary Policy

You Really Have To Go Searching Desperately To Find Any Contemporary Examples Of Good, Old-fashioned Runaway Inflation.

Until The Great Depression, Most Economists Clung To A Vision Of Capitalism As A Perfect Or Nearly Perfect System. That Vision Wasn’t Sustainable In The Face Of Mass Unemployment, But As Memories Of The Depression Faded, Economists Fell Back In Love With The Old, Idealized Vision Of An Economy In Which Rational Individuals Interact In Perfect Markets.

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John Paul DeJoria

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