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A review by dane_rodriguez
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
4.0
“There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.”
“Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means—hard as it is to believe—that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there, too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms. And even a local company is likely to pay better than trying to earn money without a job: running an illegal street stall, working as a prostitute, or combing reeking landfills in cities like Manila to find recyclable goods.”
“The dictator has to keep the economy functioning in order to keep stealing from it.”
“Fight scarcity power and corruption; correct externalities; try to maximise information; get the incentives right; engage with other countries; and most of all embrace markets, which do most of these jobs at the same time.”
“if there’s a profitable deal to be done between somebody who has something unique and someone who has something which can be replaced, then the profits will go to the owner of the unique resource.”
“Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, now commonly applied to economists Imagine”
“Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means—hard as it is to believe—that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there, too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms. And even a local company is likely to pay better than trying to earn money without a job: running an illegal street stall, working as a prostitute, or combing reeking landfills in cities like Manila to find recyclable goods.”
“The dictator has to keep the economy functioning in order to keep stealing from it.”
“Fight scarcity power and corruption; correct externalities; try to maximise information; get the incentives right; engage with other countries; and most of all embrace markets, which do most of these jobs at the same time.”
“if there’s a profitable deal to be done between somebody who has something unique and someone who has something which can be replaced, then the profits will go to the owner of the unique resource.”
“Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, now commonly applied to economists Imagine”