What exactly do they teach in college economics?

[Nielsio]

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Also, if someone wants to expound on why the positions in question are wrong-headed economically (being forced to pay textile workers in the Philippines $9.50/hr?!?!?!), that would be appreciated.

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...2726&hl=nl
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...1489&hl=nl
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9265&hl=nl

[NickMPK]

It is true that the majority of college professors are liberals, but I doubt this is true among the majority of college economics professors.

When I took economics in college, I was actually disturbed at how everything was generally simplified to support the conservative position. Although my first economics professor was a prominent conservative (and economic advisor to several GOP Presidents), I didn't get the impression that this conservative slant was his doing.

Rather, it is the way that beginning economics is taught everywhere, and a by-product of the choice to generally use wealth as a suitable substitute measure for utility.

[75s]

People don't know what they are talking about after 2 intro econ courses. In fact, many intro econ course don't teach advance econ logic, mostly just basic supply and demand / utility curves. There is no way he was a successful econ major with that kind of thinking. Most schools have 4 levels of econ before courses get specialized. He's, at best, taken the first one. This is a good starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomic-Theo...3945&sr=8-1

Popular economics really skews people's perception of a wonderful and reasonable social science.

[ianlippert]

Ya you probably just ran into some crazy liberal college student. In my micro class they definately teach us that increasing the minimum wage causes unemployment. Although they still teach us Keynsianism in Macro, they also teach us the benefits of international trade and the division of labour.

[BCPVP]

In Micro, we were taught stuff like supply/demand curves, marginal revenue and marginal cost, production possibilities frontiers, etc. In Macro, we learned about the voodoo that is the multiplier.

Though I do remember that in our micro class, we did discuss what price ceilings and floors do to the demand and supply curves. I can't remember if the professor came out and stated that the min wage should create unemployment or not, but it was logical given what effect price controls have.

[Nielsio]

To OP,

Ralph Raico - The Role of the Intellectuals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X6NprQKAMo

[Dan.]

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In fact, many intro econ course don't teach advance econ logic, mostly just basic supply and demand / utility curves.

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There's an interesting reason for this. I'll see if you can figure it out. Think hard.

[75s]

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In fact, many intro econ course don't teach advance econ logic, mostly just basic supply and demand / utility curves.

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There's an interesting reason for this. I'll see if you can figure it out. Think hard.

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Why so nasty? It's pretty obvious. But how did your post contribute?
What I was saying is that OP's villain is not advanced enough to know anything on econ, do you get it?

[erac22]

I'm an econ major at Princeton, where it is widely held that the department has a fairly liberal tilt. However, any intro econ class has only 1 way of teaching the effects of a minimum wage. With upward sloping supply and downward sloping demand for labor, an effective minimum wage would set a price floor above the intersection point of the 2 curves, thus creating a greater amount of labor supply than labor demand which = unemployment. The student you talked to probably did fairly poorly on his intro to micro/macro exam.

[erac22]

However, in econ, there are usually at least 3 sides to every story, and you can almost always create some sort of cause/effect chain to demonstrate a point. But I just can't seem to put one together to demonstrate how higher min. wage would creat less unemployment in the short term. Maybe something to do with high wages causing higher prices which cause inflation, thus mitigating the debts of impoverished nations? I'm not even sure that can take you anywhere. Maybe someone smarter than me can chime in. In the long run, increasing minimum wage should have no effect, as price levels should simply just adjust accordingly. Of course, this is all economic theory, which in the real world not reliable.