{"id":737,"date":"2004-03-29T13:38:40","date_gmt":"2004-03-29T21:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/29\/brad-delong-reports-from-the-ivory-tower\/"},"modified":"2004-03-29T13:38:40","modified_gmt":"2004-03-29T21:38:40","slug":"brad-delong-reports-from-the-ivory-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"Brad Delong reports from the Ivory Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post by economist Brad DeLong<\/a> is worth reading for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n

First, because he quotes a skeptical American Prospect <\/i>article about outsourcing at length. So go over and read that bit.<\/p>\n

Second, because of the extraordinary weakness of DeLong’s response:<\/p>\n

But–holding real GDP constant–a decline in the wages of high-skill workers is a rise in the wages of low-skill workers (and a rise in profits). Isn’t there a chance that the yuppies facing competition from Bangalore will be a highly positive development, pushing U.S. wage levels together and raising the real wages of those at the bottom?<\/div>\n

I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but that’s pretty plainly not what’s happening to actual workers in the actual marketplace. What’s also possible – and closer, I suspect, to the real world – is that low-wage workers have not benefited in the slightest from higher-wage workers being outsourced. Instead, the extra money is going to wealthy stockholders and to overpaid CEOs (on and off the books). Wheeeeeee.<\/p>\n

I have nothing against upper wages in the US being pushed down to benefit folks who need the money in India. But half the people I know don’t even have jobs. There needs to be a sufficient supply of jobs for American workers; not great jobs, but jobs that enable people to get by. Or, failing that, there needs to be a much, much more generous safety net.<\/p>\n

That a respected economist apparently thinks that things are getting better for the folks near the bottom of the scale doesn’t give me much faith in the dismal science.<\/p>\n

Also check out the comments – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thread on his site in which fewer readers were willing to agree with Mr. DeLong..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post by economist Brad DeLong is worth reading for a couple of reasons. First, because he quotes a skeptical American Prospect article about outsourcing at length. So go over and read that bit. Second, because of the extraordinary weakness … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}