Heterodox
[embedded content]Neoclassical Political Economy You may have seen the above overly polite video. I have not done this in a while, even before the pandemic. I used to, when I visited an academic bookstore or a college library, skim through textbooks, concentrating on introductory or intermediate microeconomics. Economics is in an extraordinary state, where the textbooks are full of nonsense that has been known to be logically invalid for half a century. Here is an example. David D. Friedman (Milton's son) has made the 1990 or second edition of his Price Theory: An Intermediate Text available online. And it contains this manure: This conclusion is useful for seeing how various changes affect the distribution of income. Suppose the number of carpenters suddenly increases, due to the
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| Neoclassical Political Economy |
You may have seen the above overly polite video.
I have not done this in a while, even before the pandemic. I used to, when I visited an academic bookstore or a college library, skim through textbooks, concentrating on introductory or intermediate microeconomics. Economics is in an extraordinary state, where the textbooks are full of nonsense that has been known to be logically invalid for half a century.
Here is an example. David D. Friedman (Milton's son) has made the 1990 or second edition of his Price Theory: An Intermediate Text available online. And it contains this manure:
This conclusion is useful for seeing how various changes affect the distribution of income. Suppose the number of carpenters suddenly increases, due to the immigration of thousands of new carpenters from Mexico. Both before and after the change, carpenters receive their marginal revenue product. Both before and after, they receive a wage equal to the marginal value of the last hour of leisure they give up.
But the wage after the migration is lower than the wage before. Since the supply of carpenters is higher than before, the equilibrium wage is lower. At that lower wage more carpenters are hired and their marginal product is therefore lower. With lower wages, the existing carpenters work fewer hours (assuming a normally shaped supply curve for their labor) and, when they are working fewer hours, have more leisure and value the marginal hour of leisure less. Some carpenters--those with particularly good alternative occupations--find that, at the lower wage, they are better off doing something else. The marginal cost to the worker of working an additional hour falls, either because the marginal hour is worked by one of the old carpenters who is now working fewer hours or because the marginal carpenter is now one of the new immigrants. -- David D. Friedman Chapter 14
Is Friedman a liar or a fool?