Brad Delong and Keynes’ star pupil, Milton Friedman
Lance on Dec 01 2006 at 7:01 am | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Economics, Lance's Page, Milton Friedman Memorial Page
Brad Delong had a nice post on Milton Friedman after he died. One of the amusing aspects of it was reading the debate in his comment section about what Brad had written. The vitriol and hatred was a bit overboard and there was a fair amount of incredulous disbelief at Brad’s remarks.
Delong of course is a centrist Democrat who actually understands economics and is therefore adrift in a political sea of people who either do not understand or outright reject the entire basis of economics as he understands it. It has got to be frustrating. I sometimes wonder if his sometimes over the top attacks upon the “right” are a cry for the left to leave him alone, “See, I hate them too. Really, really I do, just not because of economics!”
For example we get to free trade, he deigns to praise U.K. chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and U.S. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson as eloquent when they write:
Despite the successes of trade and liberalization, protectionist forces would have us believe that increased trade and openness hurt the U.S. and the U.K. Maintaining rules and regulations that inhibit competition may appear to be a measure of self-preservation for domestic workers and companies. It is, in fact, self-defeating.Nations are linked by trade more closely than ever before. So protectionist policies do not work, and the collateral damage from these policies is high. We must have the education and assistance to minimize and soften the dislocations that come from trade. But we must not, in the name of jobs that are becoming uncompetitive and unsustainable today, eliminate more jobs and higher wages tomorrow.
I am certainly cheered by their plucky commitment but Brad notes the sad aspects of this:
This is so self-evident, and yet here we are in 2006 making arguments for something that should have been settled conclusively decades ago.
let us just say that his audience was less than thrilled:
Self-evident like the earth being in the center of the universe? Self-evident like Lamarck?Perhaps the problem is not the self-evident truth, perhaps the problem is that it is wrong.
or
“Nations are linked by trade more closely than ever before. So protectionist policies do not work.”
Huh? Aren’t they linked more closely largely because of freer trade? They would presumably be less linked by trade if protection was more widespread. So in that case protectionist policies might work??
It’s not the most persuasive argument I’ve seen.
Those are the polite responses.
The problem of course is that economists, even the vast majority of liberal ones, are pretty set on this matter as Robert Whaples documents:
87.5 percent agree that “the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.”
I am sure the remaining 12.5% include a fair amount of people who would suggest that we eliminate most, as opposed to all trade barriers and whatever is left are Marxists (and probably many of them are in favor of reducing barriers to trade as well.)
This and a host of other issues such as Social Security reform must drive him to distraction. We will not get to see comments from his readers about his latest on Friedman because it is not on his blog, but it is well worth reading:
But Keynes’s theory was incomplete: his was a theory of employment, interest, and money. It was not a theory of prices. To Keynes’s framework, Friedman added a theory of prices and inflation, based on the idea of the natural rate of unemployment and the limits of government policy in stabilising the economy around its long-run growth trend — limits beyond which intervention would trigger uncontrollable and destructive inflation.Moreover, Friedman corrected Keynes’s framework in one very important respect. The experience of the Great Depression led Keynes and his more orthodox successors to greatly underestimate the role and influence of monetary policy. Friedman, in a 30-year campaign starting with his and Anna J Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, restored the balance. As Friedman also said, “and none of us are Keynesian.â€
The Democratic party would be a better party if it were populated with people who thought more like Brad Delong on economic issues at least. Unfortunately the economists in the party have a very unreceptive audience and we will all suffer for it. I suspect free trade, a significant cause which Friedman eloquently defended, will have a tougher time of it moving forward. Read the whole piece.
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It really is sad how few people understand even basic economics, regardless of political or ideological affiliation. That ignorance is easily manipulated into class warfare and protectionist strategies that undermine the very people claimed as the beneficiaries of such policies.
I remember a concrete example of this attitude from David R. Henderson’s book, “The Joy of Freedom,” in which a fellow student his challenged a professor’s lecture on economics with the statement (paraphrased from memory)
To which the professor replied
Unfortunately, until people can generally understand and accept that trade is not about “winners and losers” we will be stuck with such nonsense as Prof. Delong faced in the comments to his post, and as we routinely see in governmental policies towards trade (see, e.g., steel tariffs, farm subsidies, etc.).
To which the professor replied
“Wrong. In every trade both parties are better off, or else they wouldn’t make the trade.â€
Assuming perfectly rational actors, completely available information, and that the goals of the parties making the trade do not possibly change over time, right?
Assume we have a can opener…
I understand economics just fine. It’s a series of trade-offs. People like Paulson, and you, are asserting an ideology, not a set of facts. If someone wants to pinpoint the costs of a given set of trade barriers, fine. What if a nation decides those costs are acceptable?
Free-trade is an orthodoxy, not an empirically derived imperative.
[...] As an excellent illustration, echoing Lance’s earlier post, of the rather strained understanding of economics held by most people today, Lawrence H. White critiques the following observation: [...]
There are no assumptions in the “winners vs. losers” understanding of trade?
Besides, why would anyone make a trade unless they thought they were better off than before the trade? Of course, you are right that this assumes willing participants.
Then no, you do not understand economics just fine. That may be an example of economic thinking, but it does not encompass “economics” especially when it comes to trade.
The ideology I am asserting is based on facts, as opposed to ideology that says trade involves winner taking advantage of losers.
Maybe so, but it does not change the fact that, given there is no coercion involved, people won’t make a deal unless they are incentivized to do so. Can you explain why someone would make a deal that they believe makes them worse off (i.e., they are the “loser” in the equation?)
Actually I would suggest that the reason free trade is held to so overwhelmingly by economists is that it is not only an intellectually rigorous set of doctrines and arguments but empirically overwhelmingly verified. That is why despite the significant ideological differences within the economics profession, free trade cuts so convincingly across those lines. Most socialist economists accept the benefits of free trade.
Can you explain why someone would make a deal that they believe makes them worse off
The specific problem I’m thinking of involves conflicts between disparate goals over time. For example, when destitute grain farmers in Kenya, due to local and specific factors, such as a bad harvest, or a worldwide great grain harvest and a collapse in commodity prices, are forced to sell off their mechanized agricultural equivalent and most of their land at pennies on the dollar in order to purchase enough neccesities to eat through the month, that’s an example of a trade that is in their “best interests”, but is also strongly contrary to their long-run economic advantage.
If the farmer in question was pursuing an export crop, that’s an example of a series of trade choices that ultimately leave the farmer worse off.
Replicate the scenario on a macro-scale, and you have an example of microeconomic decisions being very damaging to the macroeconomy.
Or consider the example of massive capital flight during the Asian crisis in 1998.
Now, are price or trade controls an inelegant solution to these problems, yes. Do they impose costs? Yes. However, the assumption that the national economy in question is always worse off for that is just that, an assumption. As I recall, the economies in the Asian crisis that imposed controls on capital flight, contrary to IMF recommendations, suffered the least in that crisis. For one lonely and only vaguely remembered example.
For sort of a parellel to the point I’m making here, you can’t blame winners and losers thinking entirely on ignorance. For example:
Unfortunately, until people can generally understand and accept that trade is not about “winners and losers†we will be stuck with such nonsense as Prof. Delong faced in the comments to his post,
Hurrah and all, but - we credit Wall Street investment bankers with having a fairly good understanding of economics, yes? Well, when they invest in Time Warner at $30 per share and then decide to sell at $5 per share two years later, they generally describe themselves as having “lost”. Sure, everyone may have theoretically “gained” when Finance Dude sold at $5 - he gained by avoiding further decline in the value of his assets, but he nevertheless lost.
Ordinary people- and nations for that matter, can’t be expected to wish away their relative losses in trade when they occur, any more than very smart people who actually practice economists can be expected to.
Actually I would suggest that the reason free trade is held to so overwhelmingly by economists is that it is not only an intellectually rigorous set of doctrines and arguments but empirically overwhelmingly verified. That is why despite the significant ideological differences within the economics profession, free trade cuts so convincingly across those lines. Most socialist economists accept the benefits of free trade.
I accept the evidence that greater free trade correlates to greater total global output in the general sense. What that means for the consequences for any individual actor at the moment of their decision set is another question entirely, and IMO the empirical record there is mixed. There’s no question that the record contains of protectionist economies that have stagnated overtime, and *relatively open*, or *trade-based*, though not “free-trade”, economies that have prospered.
Personally, I look at the record and see that countries who create export surpluses have prospered, and those who have export deficits have suffered.
glasnost:
You are not discussing trade as between two traders. You are using examples of investment decisions that go south. That is irrelevant to the point.
Consider:
Person A has plenty of widgets but no bangles.
Person B has lots of bangles but fewer widgets than he wants.
Under what scenario, absent coercion, can Person A convince Person B to accept his widgets in exchange for Person B’s bangles if Person B thinks he is “losing” in the deal?
Or try it the other way around.
In either case, Person A and Person B will not make a trade unless they each consider themselves better off after the trade.
Your example of the Kenyan grain farmers only underscores this point. Their investment decisions may have taken a beating (i.e. to invest their capital and labor in growing grain), but the decision to trade for food is decision that leaves them better off (i.e. they can’t eat equipment and land) than they were before. The most optimal value for their grain, etc. may have changed, but that does not mean they are a “loser” in the trade of equipment and land for food if that is the next best alternative.
The Wall Street investors illustrates the same thing. They make bad investments that ultimately lose money, but when they trade money for the stock, they do not “lose” to the person who sold the stock. The investor saw value in the stock that the seller did not and willingly exchanged money for the opportunity to extract that value. That it was a bad decision, or that circumstances changed doe not make the trade between the investor and the seller a “winner vs. loser” situation. Both sides thought they were better off after the trade, and that’s why they did it.
Glasnost,
The farmer obviously felt he gained from the transaction. Michael wins. Your disagreement is with the farmer’s choice or the policies which left him with that as the best option, or both. The answer certainly isn’t that not allowing him to make that decision is in his best interest is it? Disparate goals over time have no bearing on the issue of trade in general anyway. Restricting trade in no way solves, in fact it worsens, the problem.
As for the Asian crises, are you suggesting that more protectionist countries are outperforming less protectionist countries all other things being equal? Or is it that good things don’t always happen with free capital movement (which is connected but not the same as free trade in goods.) No kidding, but that isn’t something anyone here is arguing, nor Delong.
What we would say (won’t speak for Delong, but I bet he is somewhere close to me) is that free capital is better than the other option. Kind of like investing. Over time keeping all your money in a savings account is pretty poor policy, though obviously there are years where you wished you had known to do so. If crises could be predicted accurately, and if the knowledge that you would act was not known by the holders of capital (to avoid pre-crises crises creation) then capital controls might make some sense. Of course if that kind of knowledge was easily available to everyone then we probably wouldn’t have any crises. Furthermore the very act of doing such things distorts actors behavior upsetting any ability to maneuver and making crises more likely, so countries are left with making policies based on what is usually the best option as opposed to what is in general bad policy but in a controlled world that doesn’t exist might work in certain situations.
As for its relevance to the question about being better off or not, though I disagree with it, the national results have nothing to do with the benefit of the trade to the individuals or entities. They obviously felt they gained from the trade, you are just claiming that it wasn’t in the larger societies interest. Different assertion, though still wrong and protectionism provides no solution.
If you are claiming that later individual trades (like me buying something at the store) may be regretted, sure. I am glad we had you around to let us know that. Now that we have filed that away, so what? In general I am made better off by being allowed to make the trade even if occasionally I wish I had spent the money on something else. Nor does wishing I had spent my money on something else necessarily mean I didn’t gain from the transaction, I just wish I had gotten something else.
In foreign trade that is rarely the issue for all but a small proportion of trades.
IMF- Uh, who says free traders support anything the IMF does? Not exactly a fan.
Who ever builds their case on such a world? Nobody I respect. If the world worked that way government intervention might work, because the government would have the information necessary to make decisions. That is the liberal neo-classical conceit (to the extent it is held at all) and explains all the belief after Keynes’ General Theory was published about the governments ability to manage the economy. Few people buy that kind of thing anymore, even liberals like Delong. The Hayekian’s and similar “right wing” schools of thought never bought that kind of stuff.
Michael - As far as it goes, your logical point about automatic gains from trade is fine. But you’re making a rhetorical separation between the investment action and the trades that start and stop it that doesn’t make sense in the real world. To put it more clearly - even if every individual trade made by the Kenyan grain farmer or the Wall Street Investment Banker was to his perceived benefit, or a “win-win”, the cumulative result of his individual trades is a loss.
This is a perfect metaphor of why a series of, from a very bounded perspective, “win-win” trades by microceconomic actors can neverthless result in an absolute loss by a macroeconomy collectively, and everyone in it individually. In political economy, this is called a collective action problem or a “race to the bottom”.
Regardless of the fact that global free trade benefits a global economy overall, in the abstract, there’s evidence to suggest that it certainly does produce relative winners and losers among individual nations.
That’s my point. I’m not disagreeing with what you’ve said in a limited sense. I’m simply pointing out some additional consequences that free-trade orthodoxy chooses to ignore.
Who ever builds their case on such a world? Nobody I respect.
Unfortunately, most of economics is helplessly entangled in these assumptions, simply because the models that account for them are too hard to quantify. Even when someone says “I know the above is not true”, they still use models that implicitly assume it.
glasnost:
The only thing that you’re pointing out is that some people make bad investment decisions (or, at least, riskier decisions will sometimes have bad endings). That does not have anything to do with whether or not trade itself is a competition between winners and losers.
The kind of loss to which you are referring is one of investment value that is based on individual decisions. The kind of loss to which I alluded (in the paraphrased anecdote) is where Person A “beats” Person B because Person B gets the short end of the stick. That doesn’t make any sense when you consider the fact that people don’t willingly trade if they think such trade will make them worse off.
Relative, maybe. Each individual nation however is better off. Some may gain more or less, but they all gain.
But the quote in question dealt with that? That is as far as it goes.
They are not ignored, they are either disagreed with or do not affect the case. It is as if somebody told me, yeah Ohio State won all of its games this year and proceeded to show me film of all the bad plays and mistakes that were made over the year as evidence that they suck. Completely ignoring the fact they won every game! Free trade wins. It may not produce the outcome that some third parties would design in the imaginary world of their minds, but it overwhelms the alternative. Not a bit better,
the other option.
I would like to see that record. I live for this stuff and in fact the tendency seems to run the other way. What does correlate is free trade regardless of whether they are in surplus or deficit. Give me a link, I’ll dig into that with glee.
Austrians definitely don’t, Friedman didn’t, Sowell, Mankiw, Kling, Cowen and on and on and on and on and on. You start at times with such models for ease of use and then move on, but the entire subjective knowledge argument of the Austrians is opposed to such an assumption. They definitely do not assume such a thing as the basis for free trade. Once again freely available information is exactly what free-market economists argue doesn’t exist. That is why the localized, subjective knowledge and preferences of the individual entity are given so much latitude. It is generally those most amenable to government action who are somewhat enamored with such econometric styles of reasoning, and even they usually understand they are models. Free trade is not based on such assumptions, the most ardent free traders explicitly argue against such assumptions in making their case for free markets in general.
They are not ignored, they are either disagreed with or do not affect the case. It is as if somebody told me, yeah Ohio State won all of its games this year and proceeded to show me film of all the bad plays and mistakes that were made over the year as evidence that they suck. Completely ignoring the fact they won every game! Free trade wins
No, they are ignored. This:
Relative, maybe. Each individual nation however is better off. Some may gain more or less, but they all gain.
is an example of ignoring.
I understand why: it’s a very nuanced point to realize that a series of individual decisions that, logically, according to self-interest, must be in the benefit of the actor making the decision, nevertheless results in an ultimate outcome that is *not* to that actor’s benefit.
Nevertheless:
Relative, maybe. Each individual nation however is better off. Some may gain more or less, but they all gain.
Oh?
Please consider, again, the example of the Wall Street trader who trades his assets to buy stock, which declines in value, who then trades his stock back to less assets than previously. If you wish to be extremely bounded, he has “gained” from every individual trade, but nevertheless his net worth has *declined*. In other words, he has followed a **bad** personal economic strategy through his *free trade*.
That’s the individual example. Any individual nation pursuing free trade can end up with the same consequences as that individual microeconomic actor. Net loss.
*that’s* my point. And you think it’s false.
I wish I could give you the list, but I don’t have it lying around. It takes a lot of work and a lot of research to be “sure” of one’s conclusion on a subject such as that, not that we can ever really be sure.
Nuance! We wingers never get nuance it is true, but in this case you are talking about me as opposed to economists in general and once again I don’t ignore it, it just doesn’t matter to my case.
Except in the case of nations that does not happen. I was making an empirical claim, not a theoretical one. What can happen for one investor does not apply to investors as a whole or nations. Can one concoct a scenario where enough people’s individual decisions results in a net loss for a nations economic well being? Possibly, but they are not realistic and the evidence points the other way. I’ll show you the research on this and it runs almost perfectly against your case on free trade in general, and surpluses do not correlate with wealth creation.
It is not that surpluses are bad. Though it would be great if it were generally possible to run deficits indefinitely (you mean all Bangladesh has to do is send them little bits of paper in exchange for goods? Hey, they should print some more of the stuff and give it to people!) Unfortunately trading partners do not want money but the things money can buy and want some actual goods and services in return for their goods and services, not money. So over time it works out. In general surpluses and deficits are temporary things and are neither good nor bad.
Some countries however, feeding too heavily at the mercantilist trough despite over two hundred years of theory and experience, try to permanently run surpluses through government action and thus hurt themselves, hence the slight negative correlation with surpluses and national wealth. Constantly working to get “money” and not spending it to get any actual goods and services in return is a pretty piss poor way to improve your standard of living. Your partner gets the fruit of your labor and you get to sit there and say “nyah, nyah, I have more money” in your mud hut.
Now the US is a special case because we get the advantage of a form of seignorage. Since other central banks use our “hard currency” as a bank reserve, to the extent that they hold reserves and do not spend that money on US goods and services, we in essence actually do export money in return for goods. This is very fortunate for us as long as it lasts.
The fear of course is that they will eventually stop accumulating our currency (or bonds purchased with that currency) and demand goods and services in return. Let me make that explicit, they might actually want to spend it here! Given all the trade banter in the US one would think that would be a good thing, but exporting money is really profitable and has made us have higher living standards. It wouldn’t be a great crises,as long as it isn’t a sudden and massive shift. If it is, then using Friedman’s logic on money (which I do) more money means chasing the same, or (since we might have a boom of production from all that new spending) almost the same amount of goods and services, we get inflation.
Thus while we might be working like dogs our actual living standards decline because we are shipping stuff overseas (which manifests itself as inflation and a falling dollar.)Meanwhile the adjustments in trade flows are likely to take a while (as Keynes would predict) and therefore everybody would suffer through a recession as goods that were in demand in some places ceased being demanded and capital and labor is shifted to other enterprises. Thus we all hope it isn’t sudden and it works itself out over time so that capital and labor can move at a pace that doesn’t leave so much idle at one time that it causes a downward spiral.
That is assuming that the accumulation of the existing reserves isn’t actually desirable but a product of exchange rate manipulation by amongst others the Chinese (who by the way actually account for very little of our imports.)
Ahh. A crises caused by too much government interference in the economy. Free markets can solve that.
We wingers never get nuance it is true,
Lol. I’m doing my best to be understanding, buddy :-D
Except in the case of nations that does not happen. I was making an empirical claim, not a theoretical one. What can happen for one investor does not apply to investors as a whole or nations.
I imagine that you’ve looked at a couple of examples where trade has led to economic growth, conflated strategic and selective liberalization with “free trade” and the generalized global output growth with the same, overlooked contrary examples where competing alternative explanations for economic decline are available, and basically take the conclusion you’ve arrived at on faith.
But I can’t prove that. Shucks!
“strategic and selective liberalization”–that’s what lead to the Asian crises in the first place.
The freer the trade, the better the economic result. That’s the general trend.
Obviously, starving now is in their long term interest. Preach it, dude!
Seems to me that the “imposed controls on capital flight” is the sorta thing that brought the crises in the first place. In any case, I’d argue that those sorta controls are bad long term (even if you were able to show that they had good short term results): would you want to invest in a economy that was inclined to control your investments for the “good” of the country?
Oh so nuanced! It isn’t like entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have any clue that there is any risk involved in their decisions! But nuanced glasnost knows what those ignorant entrepreneurs and venture capitalists don’t quite grasp!
He is a clue, glasnost: there are risks. We make decisions with risks in mind. Large benifit often comes with accepting high risks. When governments try to provide a framework that eliminates the risks, bad consequences tend to be the result.
For that matter, so dang nuanced that those who visit Indian casinos or play the lottery don’t get it, either!
He is a clue, glasnost: there are risks. We make decisions with risks in mind. Large benifit often comes with accepting high risks. When governments try to provide a framework that eliminates the risks, bad consequences tend to be the result.
Hmmmm. What we have here are two rather contradictory arguments.
One is that a)
deregulating in every concievable way, shape and form, thus leaving the free market as free as humanly possible, leads to the best possible outcomes for all citizens everywhere
But when someone demonstrates that this approach can quite logically lead to massive trouble,
we have b)
there are risks. We make decisions with risks in mind. Large benifit often comes with accepting high risks.
Which equals, “shutupshutupshutup” about these “problems” and “consequences”. In the free market, sometimes the choices made by individuals, communities or hey, individual nations, go disasterously wrong for everyone involved and lead to economic collapse. But that’s just risk! Deal! There’s no other way to get the greatest output possible out of the system at large!
To which the world has, of course, said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Preach it, brother. I’ve got the popcorn.
Seems to me that the “imposed controls on capital flight†is the sorta thing that brought the crises in the first place.
Yeah, you’d be wrong.
Risks always exists. There is a risk involved in doing nothing, a risk involved in, say, regulating arsnic in drinking water.
The risks are lower overall when you have a free market. Government actions to eliminate economic risk typically increase it.
Free market countries tend not to collapse. Indeed, they tend to prosper. What happens in free markets is that they tend to get fat and happy and vote in socialists. That’s when the economics goes seriously bad.
Not contradictory. Free markets can be the best possible solution, and still have risks. That was the point of my “risks always exist” comment in my last post, but I realized our “nuanced” leftists probably lacked the nuance to grasp my point.
I would not claim that free markets “lead to the best possible outcomes for all citizens everywhere”. Castro, for example, probably wouldn’t benifit from a free market in Cuba.
Yeah, me and all those liberal economists who would love to find a way to control things and make them better just made such elementary errors as those. I guess it isn’t just we wingers who don’t get nuance, it is the democratic socialist economists of the world as well.
Of course one can always in looking at each individual situation come up with alternate explanations as to why countries which practice free trade do so much better than countries which do not and vice versa. However, at the end of the day it doesn’t change the fact that my claim:
still holds true, even if one can come up with ad hoc explanations in each instance. Furthermore none of that deals with the claim that surpluses do not correlate with prosperity. So I could have made each of those errors and my empirical claim still holds, the claim is merely spurious because the correlation is mere happenstance as other factors are what really drove the results. That can’t be disproven, but I am rather impatient with unfalsifiable claims in most instances, though not all.
However, I can falsify the claim that free trade does not correlate with prosperity and that surpluses do. Maybe it is merely a cock crowing, but you have to show why to convince me of that.
Free market countries tend not to collapse. Indeed, they tend to prosper. What happens in free markets is that they tend to get fat and happy and vote in socialists
Bull*hit, Don. You’ve never seen a free market country, and neither has history. You’ve only seen markets with relatively greater or lesser amounts of regulation. And you assume, like everyone else of your ideological stripe, that the gains you think you’ve seen in one particular metric of societal accomplishment, in correlation to a trend of lesser regulation within certain overall bounds, must therefore automatically correspond all the way through to the end of the range of possibility.
Also, you’re getting steadily more condescending in tone, so I’m tabling this conversation until further notice. Have some fun parting shots.
Possibly, but they are not realistic and the evidence points the other way. I’ll show you the research on this and it runs almost perfectly against your case on free trade in general
Lance, first of all, credit to you for your civility and level-headedness during this discussion. Second, your request to ’show me the data’ is eminently reasonable and appropriate.
Unfortunately, take this as a called bluff if you want to, but I don’t do economics for a living, I don’t have the arsenal of backup info lying around, and I just can’t/shouldn’t/won’t take the time to do a bunch of independent research on the subject and demonstrate it.
Thus we reach the limits of the psychological profile and lifestyle niche that is the blog, within the larger ecosystem of my life.
But you’re perfectly reasonable not to buy it without the examples.
Okay, I’ll buy that, but I will say the data is all one way on this topic, which is why it is the most agreed upon area in economics. Near unanimity. I’ll show you some data a bit later, it is overwhelmingly one sided, unlike something like the minimum wage (though that doesn’t mean it isn’t just as strong a case, but the data is more debatable.