I have critiqued the SL repeatedly to be honest, both on the blog and in speaking engagements. There comes a point though when people don’t care – they don’t care about your argument so it doesn’t matter! As a result, and also given economists can also have ideological biases, I can’t see us doing any cool action movie hero stuff 😉

Well that’s the thing about junk science and junk economists. You only have to critique them once and then they disappear completely and never double down on their marketing and drown the criticism in even more junk science.

The matter is only dealt with when these fraudsters could not even get a gig on Campbell Live.

Picture the hero economist coolly walking away from the issue while their opponents explode in the background, Michael Bay style.

Fair point, very fair point. Oversimplification in our description of an issue can act as misinformation for the public – it is especially perverse when it is meant to obfuscate trade-offs, and pretend that transfers to the middle classes will improve outcomes for the poor (trickle-down mark II 😉 ).

Of course, I think I’ve been relatively vocal in my criticism of the book – as have a number of other economists. Going much further would be unnecessarily unreasonable.

That is a fair point Kimble, a fair point indeed – my key concern is that such a blind focus on a single aggregate misinforms the public, as that is a common result of such things.

To be honest though, my criticisms of the SL have been fairly strong. I would struggle to be much loader without becoming unreasonable 😉

Let me paraphrase that a little.

“They are wrong, but at least they are loud. And now that people looking in this direction it will mean that the quieter, more honest voices on the topic will be heard. You know, over the loud wrong ones. #wishfulthinking”

Hey Sam,

One thing I will say is that, if inequality “caused” status good competition, or people borrowing to act “as if” they are in a higher class, we can build a narrative where wasteful status good competition (as the value is relative) due to inequality is a cost. I buy this, but also recognise how complicated status goods are – and how complicated this makes understanding policy.

My concern is that it will be treated as an “ex-post justification” to simply push the targeting of aggregates. That doesn’t add up to me.

Indeed, well said