Oct 31, 2008

Does Mankiw really think poverty is caused by laziness?

How can some economists be so stubborn, not understanding the benefits of redistribution on society? And associating poverty to laziness!!? What the!!?!? Economists should all have been poor and unemployed before becoming economists, maybe then they would understand what they wanna talk about. Seriously.
This is my reaction to the comic Mankiw posted today. Happy halloween!

5 comments:

Dany Jaimovich - Bakary Baludin said...

"I am a pretty lucky guy. I have a comfortable, upper middle class life style that includes one house, two cars, three kids, a wife, and a dog."

G. Mankiw

Anonymous said...
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Rob Britton said...

Well I'd say that it isn't the only cause of poverty by far, but in the town where I grew up there are many examples where the main cause of someone being poor is laziness.

Veronika said...

did that comment really deserve to be deleted? I for one also did not really interpret Mankiw´s comics in the way you did. Redistribution is fine to some extent, but you have to be careful about how far you go before people stop misusing it. Where I am from, people who do not work because social benefits offer them a better deal are not rare at all. Another thing is that, if you overdo it with the extent of redistribution in the system, people from whom you take lose incentives to work. And when noone works then obviously there is not much to redistribute...

Veronika said...

I guess I am tired. Substitute the word stop with the word start and you have what I wanted to say.