UC Berkeley economist David Card won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics for his research on minimum wages and immigration.NOAH BERGER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Israel,and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals—
7 they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
and push the afflicted out of the way;
Amos 2: 6-7 NRSV
It's been noted by several media observers that Premier Doug Ford has not yet congratulated ex-pat Ontarian David Card on winning the Nobel Prize for economics even though Prime Minister Trudeau has. Why, oh why? I must be truthful and say that usually I pay no attention to this prize but this one seems important (I know, they all are). Card and two others were the winners although Card in particular hs challenged some basic assumptions of labour economics.
It's been suggested that economics is more of an art than a science except the Card and those who've worked with him have been data wonks who seek out empirical evidence about trends. Here is the way Ian Brown describes one aspect of Card's research, this on comparing the minimum wage in two US states:
Here again, classical economic theory predicted what seemed obvious and logical: Raise the minimum wage and jobs disappear. (It’s the same argument Doug Ford recently used to resist raising the minimum wage in Ontario.) But Card & Krueger, try as they might – and they were very rigorous – found (Hello, Mr. Ford. Are you still there?) no hint that the rise in the minimum wage reduced employment. In fact, under certain real-life conditions, boosting the minimum wage actually increased employment.
Another commandment of holy economic dogma had fallen. “The so-called conventional wisdom in a lot of these areas,” Prof. Card says, “is in fact much more complicated or ambiguous than is sometimes pretended to be the case in undergraduate textbooks.”
Card has also done research into which children get into so-called gifted programs and young people into graduate programs at universities. It would seem that who you know, how persuasive parents are, and what precedents there are in educated families disadvantage kids from immigrant families and those from poorer households. Again drawing on Brown's article in the Globe and Mail:
But it’s his more recent work on the economics of education that, he suspects, will be his most lasting contribution. In 2015, to cite just one study, Prof. Card and his fellow researcher discovered that kids in Grade 2 in an undisclosed city were selected for gifted programs almost entirely on the basis of parent-teacher meetings and referrals. The result was that minority students and underprivileged kids were under-represented in gifted programs.
Now, if your economic policy is based on the assumption that raising the minimum wage kills jobs, or that cronyism is fundamental to political life and life in general. David Card may not be the sort of person you want to praise, do ya think?
The United Church has been speaking out about a livable wage for a long time now, both in terms of a fair minimum wage and more recently about Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI). We are often dismissed as goofy leftists, although we feel that we are listening to the voices of the prophets and Jesus. I like the notion that an economist with a penchant for cold, hard data has done work which gives some credence to the gospel and the biblical imperative of economic justice.
Congratulations Professor Card. Premier Ford's best wishes are in the mail.
1 What does the Lord require of you? What does the Lord require of you?
2 Justice, kindness, walk humbly with your God.
3 To seek justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
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