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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Don't Feed the Bears or Smile at the Children

     I bumped into a friend of mine at the library last night. I originally met her back when we both worked for the Census back in 2010. We often look back on those days fondly. She was actually my crew leader. We made a lot of money-$18 an hour-and would have early morning meetings at McDonald's. 

     Since then I've moved to a new 'career'-the wonderful world of telemarketing. 

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-wonderful-world-of-chemical-sales-i.html

     Unfortunately she hasn't been able to find regular employment since-I've made the point that whether or not she would like doing it, telemarketing is something that has a low barrier to entry at least. Recently she had a job as a substitute lunch lady-which is kind of ironic with her educational background she had hoped to be able to teach. 

     Yet, she noticed they stopped calling her for shifts. Now she has figured out why: apparently they felt she was too nice to the students. I find this a very interesting example of a microscopic society at work. It makes me think of nothing so much as a cousin of mine who's a prison guard. When he first started other guards didn't like him because he was too nice to the inmates. 

    He argues that over time this has served him better-he gets the respect of the inmates who realize that at least he's fair. However, it's interesting what this says about social psychology is it not? Recently I talked about the fact that economists are not just scientists-though even this has been contested-but also are members of their own society. One that in significant ways is at variance in their beliefs and opinions with the larger society. 

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-sumner-claims-im-ignorant-of.html

   For example, most economists think that its legitimate to raise prices of snow shovels during a blizzard-most laypeople think it's wrong. I notice that Unlearning Econ has written a bit more on what you might call the social psychology of economists lately. 

  http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/a-question-for-economists/

  "This is only a brief, cursory overview, but even so we should have expected better examples of economists’ successes, and far fewer, less catastrophic failures. In my opinion, if there is a role for economists in advising policy, it’s on small, micro-issues like Al Roth’s auctions, or on specific empirical matters. However, once we get more complex, economists’ pet policies seem to be at best neutral, and they have no empirical reason to prefer their choices to those of the electorate."

  He argues that we don't actually need economists to have an economy anymore than we need physicists to have laws of physics. Well I added the analogy but it's true ta many things we do are based on political or social decision rather than economics. Take the minimum wage. Till this very day, only about 50% agree that the MW is beneficial economically-yet we have long since agreed as a society that whatever the alleged losses of efficiency we don't believe employers can pay workers less than a certain bare minimum. 

   

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