Must-Read: There is a deeper layer here. The Bastiat whom Bryan Caplan reads is not the true Bastiat. The true Bastiat is an American neoliberal--private where private belongs, public where public is needed, circumstances alter cases, and societal well-being is the yardstick. Cf. Keynes "The End of Laissez-Faire". Bring Bastiat evidence of powerful employer-side monopsony in the low-wage labor market, and in all likelihood he would been on the Card and Krueger side:
(2012): The Never-Ending Libertarian Quest to Appear Clever: "I have been following an amusing back-and-forth between Bryan Caplan (I, II, III) and Matt Yglesias...
...about Bastiat’s "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen". Initially, Caplan points out that individuals often support left-leaning economic policies for wrong reasons.... Bastiat['s] tidy little stories (e.g. the parable of the broken window) show why those reasons are bad. Problematically... Bastiat... fail[s] when confronted with more intellectually sophisticated ones... the minimum wage:
Take the minimum wage. Normal people like it because the government waves a magic wand and makes mean employers give helpless workers extra money, with zero blowback. So inane, yet so convincing to a psychologically normal human. An intellectually serious argument, in contrast, begins by conceding the theoretical possibility of a disemployment effect, then defends low estimates of labor demand elasticity. This is a huge improvement in intellectual substance, yet persuades only wonks...
Bastiat’s arguments are... irrelevant in sophisticated debates. Caplan really does not like this... [so] he puts forward a conspiracy theory about the way left-wing intellectuals are made:
It’s admittedly conceivable that wonks discovered intellectually serious substitutes for almost all of the mock-worthy arguments the public loves. But a more plausible story is that few wonks truly free themselves from their emotional attachment to popular policies. So instead of weighing whether e.g. Social Security is genuinely a good idea, they use their powerful intellects to defend Social Security to the best of their abilities...
Caplan is obviously just shooting from the hip.... I thought it would be fun to also shoot from the hip.... Bastiat still allows them to point out how stupid the reasoning of the bulk of minimum wage supporters is even if their policy conclusions wind up being right...
