Editor, the Wall Street Journal, In a bold effort to vaccinate Americans against the insidious lump-of-labor virus, the Wall Street Journal today carries an article by one Christopher Rhoads headlined, "Europe's Prized Leisure Life Becomes Economic Obstacle." The analytical nub appears in a paragraph located almost midway through the piece:
"Enter the shorter working week. Unions argued that reduced hours would spur job growth by spreading the same amount of work among more people. Most economists dismissed the theory, but some argued it could force Europeans to become more efficient, squeezing more work into less time. "Neither turned out to be true." What Mr. Rhoads neglects to inform his readers is that the preceding is a formulaic set piece, the prototype of which first appeared in an 1871 Quarterly Review article by Mr. J. Wilson entitled "Economic Fallacies and Labour Utopias." The formula was perfected in a 1901 screed featured in the London Times under the headline, "The Crisis in British Industry." From 1903 to 1913 -- when a congressional investigation brought their activities to light -- the National Association of Manufacturers spared no expense of political bribery, financial extortion and physical intimidation to inscribe the same message as the common sense consensus of all sane, sober, self-respecting economists everywhere. In short, Mr. Rhoads' paragraph is a hoary slander. What is more, if there can be such a thing as plagiarizing slander, the paragraph -- fraudulently represented as Mr. Rhoads' own observation of some recent "argument" about "spreading the same amount of work" and the subsequent "dismissal" of the "theory" by "most economists" -- is a plagiary. Although Rhoads discretely omits the tell-tale term, the drill often passes under the sobriquet of "the lump-of-labor fallacy". It was a mainstay in Paul Samuelson's Economics through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s even though the Nobel Prize winning textbook author has subsequently been unable to account for its source or validity. Speaking of fraud, why doesn't Mr. Rhoads write an article advocating accounting fraud as a boost to global competitiveness? Perhaps he could even crib a few passages in support of his case (sans acknowledgement, naturally) from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Tom Walker 604 254 0470
