tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post7633880479449263041..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: On Free LunchesRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-80145655437451822692020-02-24T10:38:24.192+01:002020-02-24T10:38:24.192+01:00What a great story!
I think, cause I'm an idio...What a great story!<br />I think, cause I'm an idiot and an optimist, that political economics is turning slowly away from its Harvard business death march back to the land of the living. I'm probably wrong. I've been reading how the Pres of Harvard personally intervened to make sure they didn't give Gabriel Zucman, who works on inequality (and is the brain behind Warren's wealth tax) tenure - cause that is how they do things in the Hedge fund that pretends its a university. Luckily he found tenure on the West Coast at, I think, Berkeley. But still...Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-77218755503875144202020-02-24T08:04:14.627+01:002020-02-24T08:04:14.627+01:00Back in 1970, when my mother was just finishing he...Back in 1970, when my mother was just finishing her PhD in economics and I was a 16 year old first year college student I wrote a paper about logical positivism and the great questions that different disciplines ask. I talked to my mother about what those questions would be for economics and two I remember that she suggested were, "How much does it cost?" and "WHO PAYS?" I remember she especially emphasized the second one. (No surprise. She was a labor economist. No one who studies labor markets forgets this second question, unless it's deliberately.) Then she had to watch over the next 40 years as the operative question became, "How do we convince people to pay for those who are better off than themselves at the expense of those worse off?" <br /><br />When I got interested in economics during the housing bubble she told me she would never recommend anyone to study the subject today- and she wouldn't have gotten into it herself if she'd known how it would develop. Sarahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16366856391266597747noreply@blogger.com