This just in from The Economist (thanks to Google alert): "The lump of labour fallacy is seductive, and in times of economic hardship it becomes very difficult to convince people that more competition for scarce jobs will make their lives better."
It's "counter-intuitive" innit? The unemployed would be better off if there were more people competing for fewer jobs than if there were fewer people competing for more jobs. I wonder why it is so hard to convince people of such a fiendishly clever foregone conclusion? Stupid people. Maybe it's because it just ain't so? The editors of The Economist magazine must get some kind of product placement bonus for mentioning the lump of labour claim whenever they can. Last month it was a cover story on the idea that postponing pension eligibility until age 70 will make lives better for older folks, as well as for 20-25 year olds for whom there will be more jobs if the old folks don't retire. "A potential barrier to older people staying on in the workforce is the “lump-of-labour fallacy”—the belief that there is only so much work to go around." Stupid people! Don't they know that the worse things get for them the better it will be for everyone (including themselves)? Don't they know realize that fiendishly clever foregone conclusions are indisputably true by virtue of being fiendishly clever AND foregone? ...and repeated over and over again? On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 6:16 AM, c b <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/05/open-letter-to-paul-krugman.html?spref=fb > > > > An Open Letter to Paul Krugman > Dear Professor Krugman, > > I am writing to you because three times over the last 14 months your > authority has been invoked to me on behalf of the assertion that > people who advocate shorter working time as a remedy for unemployment > are guilty of a "lump-of-labor fallacy" assumption that there is only > a fixed quantity of work in the world. As did John Maynard Keynes, I > believe that working less is one of "three ingredients of a cure" for > unemployment. I find it odd to learn that I (and presumably Keynes) am > thereby assuming a palpable absurdity: that the amount of work to be > done is invariant. >
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