ECONOMICS

Why Americans work longer: "It's become a common refrain: American workers are badly overworked, driven to a loss of leisure, sleep and possibly sanity by their material and status obsessions... Most U.S. workers positively still crave getting a shot at overtime hours during a boom period.... people do not want to trade off work for leisure beyond a certain point... A 40-hour week, despite inevitable time preference differences across population groups, seems overall a sensible, natural level. Moreover, it is the weekend that Americans seek to preserve more than the eight-hour workday."

Myths and legends of union accomplishments: "The bottom line is that no union can successfully get a compensation package beyond the market value of their members without resort to force. In a free and competitive market employees who demand more money than the state of the labor market indicates will end up jobless. It is that simple. Attempts to force the market to accept higher than market wages, are generally made by keeping other workers from participating in the artificially high-wage structure. Workers are hurt so others may prosper."

The truth about globalization: Review of Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization: "Globalization in fact reduces poverty and the use of child labor, fosters women's rights, promotes respect for democratic norms, enriches culture, and even sustains the environment. Multinational corporations are not wreaking havoc by leveling wages and labor standards across the globe. In fact, they raise them... Looking more closely at developments within Asia bolsters the point. Who can doubt, Bhagwati asks, that the dramatic reductions in poverty in China and India came about only when these countries began integrating with the world economy, mimicking the tactics of Japan, Korea, and Singapore? Trade and foreign direct investment boost growth, and growth reduces poverty".

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