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Inequality; Lant Pritchett is Awesome; the Injustice of Labor Market Restrictions

Started by Will Wilkinson · 9 months ago

My new project for Cato is a paper on how to not get confused when you’re trying to think about inequality. In that context, today’s NYT Magazine focusing on inequality is pure catnip. There are, of course, completely infuriating passages, such as this one, in ... Continue reading »

4 comments

  • Glen

    2 years ago

    I'm sure you already know this, but if you're listing off the problems with looking at quintiles' shares of income, this must be said: average real income has risen for all five quintiles. The rich have gotten a lot richer, while the poor have gotten a little richer.
    reply
  • Slocum

    2 years ago

    Hey, ho, restrictions on labor mobility have to go!

    The problem is numbers -- immigrants would swamp and destroy the economies and social orders of the rich countries. And the continuing success of those wealthy countries is critical to the ultimate lifting out of poverty of those in the developing world. And by ultimate, I don't mean in the sense of 'in the long run we are all dead' since Japan, Korea, China and the smaller 'Asian tigers' have made stunning progress in periods of time shorter than a generation let alone a human lifespan.

    I think industrialized countries could take many more immigrants than they do and that this would be a good thing, but unlimited mobility would be a disaster, I'm afraid.
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  • Dain

    2 years ago

    "Hey, ho, restrictions on labor mobility have to go!"


    The term "labor mobility" rather than "people mobility" takes the edge off of the radical counter-"Social Justice" Social Justice that you advocate. It has a conservative (as in right wing libertarian) ring to it, implying that immigrants are solely good for the economy, rather than good for an ethic that seeks to apply the same standards of justice for all.

    Invoking Rawls helps, but the constant use of "labor mobility" injures the humanist dimension by saddling it with that which is good for the libertarian economist's particular obsession.
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  • Helly

    1 year ago

    Like you, Lant Pritchett has quickly become on my my intellectual heros. Yet, it makes me worried that he seems to breeze over the exploitation that unskilled guest workers may face in the migration process. If the wage differential is so high ad benefits of migration are so enticing -- then many more people will seek to migrate than actually migrate at any given point. Who goes and who stays? Perhaps the person who pays the most to a middleman or a recruiter.
    reply

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