I somehow overlooked last time (and so did Financial Times, apparently…) pointing out this excellent piece of advice from Tim Harford on… bikini waxing. Yet another proof that economics can also deal very well with more e(x,r)otic topics.
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On raising the federal minimum wage in the USA
I largely agree with Gary Becker and Richard Posner with reference to the Democrat proposal for raising the minimum wage in the USA. Despite the fact that the proposal is also supported (and to some extent, ignited to start with) by many remarkable economists, I do not think there is any undisputed, clear, evidence that the benefits would outweigh the costs, and moreover there are better alternatives that can be used towards the same (declared) goals (as, for instance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, first championed as the “negative income tax” by the late Milton Friedman; as Posner discusses in his post mentioned above, why not work towards making that more generous, since the EITC is probably a less inefficient tax than the minimum wage).
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A recent post of Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution indicates three clips on YouTube from the Undercover Economist tv show on BBC2 with Tim Harford. I thought everybody could benefit from watching them:
- here’s Tim giving answers to every single problem one might have
- Akerlof’s market for lemons in practice
- Don’t take advice from “experts”
Tyler Cohen’s post mentioned above, on long-distance relationships, is very interesting in itself and it links to other great advices by Tim Harford in his Dear Economist column from The Financial Times. → Read more
More on Milton Friedman
An update for one of my previous posts. In the last days many have written on Milton Friedman. I chose below a selection of pieces written by well-known economists and not just any of them, but indeed some of my favourites:
- Gary Becker’s more personal note, very moving and very well written.
Today we lost one of the greatest economists of all times
The following lines about Milton Friedman should say a lot about his principles, even for non-economists:
In 1962, Mr. Friedman took on President John F. Kennedy’s popular inaugural exhortation: “Ask not what your country can do for you.
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