Katz's contribution to URPE, if I remember correctly was a weak presentation of the environmental Kuznets curve. It was very weak.
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [email protected] michaelperelman.wordpress.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2013 9:41 PM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] The idled young Americans Katz is presumably a Democrat -- he was Chief Economist in the Clinton Admin. Labor Department. The point being that Katz is the ideal "very serious person" centrist. Spouts 19th century reactionary anti-labor boilerplate and the AFL-CIO campaigns to put his ilk in office. In 1998 Katz wrote a commentary to an article by Jennifer Hunt that contained one-half of one of the the stupidest arguments I have ever seen in my life (and offers a clue to why a jobless recovery is a "very big puzzle" to him): "if hourly wages rise and labor is viewed as more inflexible, such policies could induce capital substitution for labor." What's wrong with that? The other half of the argument, delivered in a 2011 white paper co-authored with David Autor: "Technological improvements create new products and services, shifting workers from older to newer activities. Higher productivity raises incomes, increasing demand for labor throughout the economy." It helps to understand that "technological improvement" is a euphemism for "capital substitution for labor." Use the former phrase when you want everyone to think everything will work out just fine and dandy (in the long run). Use the latter phrase when you want to warn against unwise policies that might -- shudder! -- lead to higher hourly wages. Anyway, according to the impeccable Katz logic, there is no need for higher hourly wages because "higher productivity raises incomes" (presumably without any capital substitution-inducing demands for higher hourly wages from workers). Or perhaps those raises in income come from working more hours with no rise in hourly wages? As Professor Katz has shown, there is more than one way to skin a worker. On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 7:02 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Yes, Katz is bad but you have to think the journalist Leonhardt has bad judgement. He keeps going back to Katz and Autor (of MIT) for quotes and Autor by himself is just as bad or worse than Katz. In the"White Paper" that Tom cites they appeal to authority (Krugman and Samuelson) -- which should be frowned on in the higher levels of Pen-l scholarship -- and then use anecdotal evidence (also a no-no) to "prove" that technology creates jobs. But Leonhardt and other NYT journalists have rolodexes that cover the spectrum of opinion from the right wing to the far right wing. I've seen Autor referred to as a Democrat -- why did URPE put him on the program in the past? Gene -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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