Check out Salem Center visiting senior scholar Bryan Caplan’s new book Labor Econ Versus the World: Essays on the World’s Greatest Market. The book collects the very best of his EconLog essays, where he has been blogging since 2005, on the science and ethics of work.
Caplan gives readers a tantalizing bundle of puzzling questions. Why is illegal immigration so low? What’s the harm of banning jerky employers? How lazy are professors, really?
He provides a long list of contrarian answers. Immigration is grossly underrated. Education is grossly overrated. “If you don’t like it, quit” does far more for workers than government ever has.
At the same time, Caplan happily embraces unfashionable yet obvious truths. Government regulation kills jobs. Most professors have a poor grasp of the real world. And bourgeois common sense is correct: Work hard, plan ahead, and your odds of finding prosperity and joy in the First World are excellent.
“Prepare to have your premises questioned! Bryan Caplan is a master at showing that apparent truisms aren’t always true.”
–George Mankiw, Harvard University
The book is available now on Amazon.
