I tend to agree with Don Boudreaux about almost everything, but I think one bit of this recent letter to the editor is misleading:

First, in market economies incomes aren’t “distributed”; they’re produced and earned.  Second, persons whose earnings rise disproportionately more than those of other persons generally achieve this outcome by increasing their production disproportionately more than other persons increase theirs; the fact that someone’s income rises means that he or she already is pitching in more.  Third, the share of federal individual income-tax revenues paid by America’s top one-percent of income earners has recently been on the rise.  In 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) this tiny group of Americans paid a whopping – and all-time high – 39.9 percent of such taxes.

The first point is right on, as is the third. But the first half of the second point attributes intention where it should not, and the second half of the second point fallaciously infers a kind of increased effort from increased productivity. Let’s look at it closer:

… persons whose earnings rise disproportionately more than those of other persons generally achieve this outcome by increasing their production disproportionately more than other persons increase theirs

Holding demand and hours worked equal, increased inequality in earnings in wages tends to imply increased inequality in productivity. But a worker may become more productive due to some innovation in a technology that complements his or her skills without having done anything to increase his or her productivity.  

… the fact that someone’s income rises means that he or she already is pitching in more. 

If the rise comes from an increase in hours worked, sure. But trends in increasing wage and income inequality are primarily a matter of supply and demand. If demand for a certain set of skills goes up relative to supply, the wages of workers with that set of skills tends to go up. The fact that engineers are paid more than gardeners mostly has to do with the fact that engineers are relatively scarce compared to engineering opportunities, while gardeners are relatively plentiful compared to gardening opportunities. Wage and income levels are a pretty poor index of the social value of work, so an increase in an individual’s income neither suggests an increase in effort nor an increase of the value of the individual’s type of work. What it means is that, for whatever reason, that person’s skills happen to command an increasingly high wage on the market. 

The idea that income tracks virtue, effort, or merit–anything other than supply and demand–is a myth that I think Hayek pretty well exploded. I think it hurts more than it helps to suggest that the emergent pattern of incomes somehow reflects who is and who isn’t pitching in, since it doesn’t. For my money, Don is the world’s best economic fallacy exposer, so consider this a tribute to Don.

is not enough.

Thanks to Bryan Appleyard of the UK’s Times Online for choosing this here blog for his Top 100 list. I’m a mere Top 7000 blog, according to Technorati’s reductionist quantitative metrics. I have to say I prefer Bryan Appleyard’s inscrutable yet discerning methodology. 

Thanks to the incomparable Alex Massie for the heads-up.

Kerry has uncovered a treasure of indescribable value in an obscure government document filed in the University of Iowa Library. It is the transcript of an FDA/AMA luncheon speech that includes the line “With the magic lotion that arrived only today she is carefully massaging these tiny protuberances…”

I agree with Jacob Levy: This John Holbo Crooked Timber post and ensuing discussion thread is wonderful in so many ways.

Thanks to the hundreds who participated in the polls. I’m going to shut them off at noon, Iowa time.

The results of the basic Hood Conjecture poll will be easy to display, but the Magic Buttons need some slicing and dicing for useful visualization. Sadly, I am a spreadsheet tard. Anyone out there a Google Spreadsheet ninja who wants to make me cool charts?

It would be fun to do a longer survey designed to reveal some actually meaningful information. But fill out my stupid survey anyway, because it’s really interesting to see how people answer.

[NOTICE: POLL CLOSED. DATA ANALYSIS UNDERWAY]

Maybe something useful here for budding macroeconomic policymakers?

[HT: Farsam]

Don’t miss this!

In case you forgot, here’s what objective political news analysis looks like. Shockingly straightforward! I think the problem with the American media is that it’s full of Americans who overestimate the importance of American micro-politics, and so, consciously or subconsciously, undertake every damn story as a public-opinion-shaping framing our counter-framing exercise and eventually forget how to report the obvious interpretation of events. This isn’t willful. The obvious interpretation of events has simply become invisible to their team-spirited minds. This is not to say that there isn’t, at the the same time, a very strong sense of the professional obligation to be “objective,” but that tends to manifest itself as pretending to take the other team’s talking points seriously, which is really not at all what objectivity requires.

Mind-altering prescriptivism.

We all have off days. Not every poem is a good one. So was that a terrible poem or is Elizabeth Alexander a terrible poet? Well, I just spend a whole three minutes on her web page and I can say with complete certainty that she is a terrible poet. She is to poetry approximately what Rick Warren is to theology. So… Why?!!! Politics has its reasons.

But don’t take my word for it. Have you read “Neonatology,” by Elizabeth Alexander? Here is the beginning, offered for your personal evaluation.

—
Neonatology 

Is
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.

Then everything dries and disappears
Then everything dries and disappears

Neonatology 

—

In my opinion, that’s the best part.

Mild error about Clinton’s record of peace aside, Chris Rock is obviously a better grade of celebrity. Via the bethrothed, who is more incisive than even Chris Rock when she writes:

This would be a better country if the new administrator of our public goods jurisdiction were ushered into office with all the fanfare of a shift change at Target.

That said, I’d like to appoint Chris Rock Official Enumerator of the President’s Responsibilities:

CNN: What are you hoping Barack Obama does for this country? What do you think is his most important task?

Rock: You know, if you’re the president you only have two jobs: peace and money. That’s it. I mean, it’s like, what did Clinton do? We were at peace and we had a budget surplus. That’s it. That’s the gig. The closer you get us to those two goals, you know, that’s pretty much the gig. Is that too much to ask for?

Too much because too little.

From that wonderland of freethinkery, Overcoming Bias, Eliezer writes:

At tonight’s Thanksgiving, Erin remarked on how this was her first real Thanksgiving dinner away from her family, and that it was an odd feeling to just sit down and eat without any prayer beforehand.  (Yes, she’s a solid atheist in no danger whatsoever, thank you for asking.)

And as she said this, it reminded me of how wrong it is to give gratitude to God for blessings that actually come from our fellow human beings putting in a great deal of work.

So I at once put my hands together and said,

“Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this.  Amen.”

Of course, John Locke stripped us of reverence for God’s providence, making gratitude basically impossible. So take this for what its worth. In any case, I’m grateful for Eliezer, despite the fact that he probably doesn’t care about food miles.