ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Two advantages of a freer market economy over a more heavily interventionist system are often (1) lower unemployment, (2) a vital, entrepreneurial enough economy to offer more satisfying work. This may mean fewer people stuck in (often depressing) long-term unemployment as well as fewer people stuck in (often depressing) crap low-paid jobs.
However, there is one significant advantage to not going too far with a completely non-interventionist free market economy: being unemployed is often superior to taking a job you don't like. Even if there may be more good jobs in the free market, having some state help for the unemployed may still offer better job-matching, and hence more satisfying work to more people. Having the option to take a longer time to find a new job may offer the chance to wait for a *really* good job. The state can help with that in case workers have not had the chance or opportunity to obtain private unemployment insurance that can offer them a good length of time to peruse for the best job.
Arnold,
I agree with your statement about it being a really good thing with one big qualifier: as long as government isn't subsidizing it.
Work today is a lot more optional? In what *sustainable* way? Real returns are low. Income growth is low. Retirement is more difficult. People are living longer. The prices of necessities are rising. To me, this points to a possible societal breakdown, not an incrementally more utopian future.
Is there a statistically significant difference between 42% and 48%? Probably not.
The standard error on the 400 actively disengaged persons is 2.5 percentage points and the standard error on the not engaged persons is 1.5 percentage points, so the confidence intervals of the two estimates overlap.
sqrt((.48 * .52) / 400) = 0.024979992
sqrt((.42 * .58) / 1 116) = 0.0147742875
I'm too lazy to calculate the t-test for the difference in means.
@liberty,
...being unemployed is often superior to taking a job you don't like.
Yes. I live with the kind of people that would almost certainly be less happy if they didn't have student loans (for classes that occupy very little of their time) and grants to keep them seemingly perpetually off the job market. They are too excited with things that interest them to be bored by unemployment, unlike alot of people who probably just need to feel engaged by almost anything that will keep them busy and goal oriented.
In this vein, this study shows the importance of not merely being busy, but being busy doing something deemed worthy of, well, doing.
Before the industrial revolution, 80% or more of the human resources were needed just to provide the basics (food, shelter, clothing).
Now these same basics can be provided using 10% or less of the total resources (in terms of labor, energy, etc.).
If you are frugal enough, a 4-Hour Workweek is not impossible.
I was going to post about the nonsense of this statement; that only somebody who is independently-wealthy enough to not have to work -- like Arnold, who cashed-in on homefair.com in the late 90s did -- could hold such an opinion.
But Jason Ruspini beat me to it.
Arnold, if I do not work, I do not get to save for retirement, which, thanks to advances in medical technology and health awareness, is a problem, because by the time I -- as a 29 year-old software developer -- am old enough to die, I will likely be well into my 90s or 100s, given the rate of improvements seen in lifespan.
If I do not work, I do not get to buy groceries, or a new car, or new computer, or go on vacations, or rent or buy a home, or anything else any more than my savings permit me. And while I can safely live my current lifestyle for over 2 years on the savings/investments I do have, that S/I are not *nearly* enough to permit me this absurd "optional work" fantasy you claim (and have claimed many times before, to far too little objection).
I have the fantasy of becoming i.e. Tony Stark and fitting the model you describe, and am working towards that goal -- in my free time, when I'm not earning a salary to sustain myself. But I am a VERY long way from that life. So is well over 99% of America (to say nothing of the rest of the world).