Responding to Brad and Alan
By Jared Bernstein
July 15, 2008
Opinion pieces and speeches by EPI staff and
associates.
[ THIS PIECE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED
IN TPM CAFE BLOG ON APRIL 11, 2008. ]
Responding to Brad and Alan
By Jared
Bernstein
The Great Merit Debate: OK, OK…mea culpa re the ambiguity of “merit.” I’m not trying to be elusive. I’m just trying to find words that work for lots of different readers from different walks of like.
Let me be, I hope, totally clear: for Brad, Alan, and any other economist, merit=marginal product. Thus, principle one is very simply arguing that while a central tenet of economics is that your income is equal to the marginal value you add to the economy, reality is otherwise. Your bargaining power—your ability to claim more than your marginal product or get stuck with less—is an ever-increasing determinant of economic outcomes.
Read the rest of this piece here.
Jared
Bernstein is senior economist at the Economic Policy
Institute in Washington, D.C.
[ POSTED TO VIEWPOINTS ON JULY 15,
2008. ]
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