I think it is fine – we cannot control the people without knowledge making open statements – but, it is left to the reader to decide on who is writing on what – and the knowledge levels of the person who is writing.

-Anand.

Perhaps I have been unfair to Kathy; maybe I was in a cranky mood when I read her post (when it appeared back in May). But if she had only summarized the literature, with some commentary thrown in, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eye. What stuck in my craw, however — and still does, upon a fresh reading — is passages like this: “[I]t’s a huge mistake to view the purchase of a unit of human labor as being exactly the same as the purchase of a widget. What economics has done is to take the models of the supply and demand of consumer goods and apply them to the supply and demand of labor. This, I believe, is fundamentally wrong-headed. Human labor and consumer goods are categorically different, and it’s a big mistake to treat them as if they were interchangeable. There are a slew of institutions, norms, and other features of labor markets that do not apply to product markets.” This isn’t just a straw man; it’s a man made of carbon nanotubes. What economist has ever argued that labor and widgets are identical? Certainly not Kevin Murphy, or Finis Welch, or any of the specialists on the other side of the Card-Krueger debate. And when Kathy writes, “This, I believe, is fundamentally wrong-headed,” it sure sounds to me like she claims to be making a profound, original insight. And, really, do you guys regard this as a temperate remark: “I also believe, based on his writings, that Kevin Murphy, like all too many economists, takes the models literally. He is so enamored of them that he sees them, I think, not as tools for understanding, but as God’s revealed truth, handed down to Moses on stone tablets. He’s an economic fundamentalist, if you will. . . . Fortunately, though, the old-fashioned theories about labor markets that Murphy and others hold are gradually being displaced.”

Again, if I came across as smug and condescending in my post, I apologize. But I stand by my assessment of the substance and tone of the original post. It’s a polemic, it’s snide, dismissive, and totally inappropriate given the writer’s (presumed) age and experience.

The argument in the post is that labor markets are different from those in the simplest kind of model where the law of demand is usually presented, and so you should be careful in drawing inferences of this kind (and, no, ceteris paribus does not function as an all-purpose get out of jail free card here).

If you’re going to complain about misquotation, you should be more careful yourself.

As you note yourself above, “Even in the blogosphere the rules of civilized discourse should apply. Treat your intellectual opponents with respect.” Your response would perhaps have been more compelling if you had applied these rules of thumb to your own blogpost. I know that you’re a smarter and more thoughtful person than this post might seem to suggest.

“With some studies estimating no effect on employment, and with many of those that do [find a negative employment effedt] estimating an own-wage labor demand elasticity well below unity (the average in Table 4.1), we remain notably uncertain about how employment among low-wage workers responds to increases in the minimum wage. We will come back to this issue…and offer a possible reason for why mandated wage increases might have a smaller and more uncertain effect on labor demand than wage increases generated by market forces.”

Certainly a ringing endorsement of the proposition that increases in the minimum wage always and everywhere lead to employment declines, eh?