Conversable Economist

It’s become a nearly standard claim that economics inequality makes people feel worse-off, or perhaps even leads to mental illness. However, Nicolas Sommet,  Adrien A. Fillon, Ocyna Rudmann,  Alfredo Rossi Saldanha Cunha and Annahita Ehsan did what is called a “meta-analysis” of the available studies–that is, they went back and looked at the underlying data, methods, and findings of the available studies. They state their findings bluntly in the title: “No meta-analytical effect of economic inequality on well-being or mental health” (Nature, published November 26, 2025, a readable overview/summary of the study is available here, and I quote from it below).

It’s perhaps useful to clarify the question being asked. Many studies have used survey data that asks people questions about themselves, and also asks them to rank their own well-being–say, on a scale from 1-7. Those with lower incomes will generally report lower well-being than those with higher incomes. But that finding shows only that income is associated with lower well-being–not that the degree of inequality affects the level of well-being.

Instead, imagine that you are in a society where inequality rises over time. Does the reported well-being of those at the lower end decline as inequality rises? Or imagine that you are comparing between people in different societies, some with greater inequality than others. Do those with lower income levels who also live in higher-inequality societies consistently report a lower level of well-being, compared with those with lower income levels who live in lower-inequality societies? Here’s a summary of the method and results of the study:

[E]xisting studies have mostly looked at a small number of countries, regions or cities, making their results sensitive to random variations and hard to replicate. Researchers have tried to address this limitation with meta-analyses (methods that combine findings across studies), but earlier efforts included only 9–24 studies and rarely examined for whom and when inequality might affect well-being and mental health.

To review the relationship between economic inequality and well-being or mental health, we screened thousands of scientific papers and contacted hundreds of researchers to identify all work on the subject. We included 168 studies, involving a total of more than 11 million participants. Nearly all samples were nationally representative, spanning countries across most world regions. We extracted more than 100 study features from each paper and linked them to more than 500 World Bank indicators to describe each study’s national context. We summarized the papers’ findings and conducted further analyses, including replicating results using data from the Gallup World Poll, which from 2005 to 2021 surveyed more than two million respondents from more than 150 countries.

First, we found that people living in more-unequal places did not, on average, report lower well-being (life satisfaction or happiness) than those in less-unequal places. The average effect across studies was not statistically significant, was practically equivalent to zero and did not depend on study quality, design, outcome or geographic scale. Second, although some studies reported that people in more-unequal places had poorer mental health, we found that this pattern reflected publication bias: small, noisy studies that reported larger effects were over-represented .. After adjusting for this bias, the average association between economic inequality and mental health shrank to essentially zero.

Further analyses showed that the near-zero averages conceal more-complex patterns. Greater income inequality was associated with lower well-being in high-inflation contexts and, surprisingly, higher well-being in low-inflation contexts. Greater inequality was also associated with poorer mental health in studies in which the average income was lower. We conclude that inequality is a catalyst that amplifies other determinants of well-being and mental health (such as inflation and poverty) but on its own is not a root cause of negative effects on well-being and mental health.

Of course, no single study or meta-study will offer a final consensus resolution to a big question like this one. Moreover, the statement that living in a society with greater income inequality does not make the poor worse off does not contradict the statement that being poor–regardless of the level of inequality in your society–can have negative effects on subjective well-being and on mental health.

Hat tip: I ran across this study because of a mention at the ever-useful Marginal Revolution website.

By “selective universities,” I mean places like Ivy League schools, along with places like Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the Chicago. Such schools admit only a small fraction of their applicants. However, to reassure both insiders and outsiders that they are open to admitting a broad range of students–whatever their socioeconomic background–these schools also have large numbers of people working departments of admissions to screen and evaluate applicants.

It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the actual effect of departments of admissions is that the student bodies of these institutions end up including more students from the top 1% of the income distribution than would happen if the schools just admitted students purely by SAT scores. Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John N. Friedman provide the evidence in “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, published online October 30, 2025, ungated copies available a various places, like here). They write at the start of the essay:

Leadership positions in the United States are held disproportionately by graduates of a small number of highly selective private colleges. Less than half of one percent of Americans attend Ivy-Plus colleges (the eight Ivy League colleges, Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford). Yet these twelve colleges account for more than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs, a quarter of U.S. senators, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century.

From the abstract of the paper, they summarize the results this way (emphasis is mine):

We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and causal effects of attending Ivy-Plus colleges (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago). Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admission rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges. The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by three factors: (i) preferences for children of alumni, (ii) weight placed on nonacademic credentials, and (iii) athletic recruitment. Using a new research design that isolates idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants, we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and almost triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. The three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with postcollege outcomes, whereas academic credentials such as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of postcollege success.

In the paper, they write:

We consider a counterfactual admissions scenario in which colleges eliminate the three factors that drive the admis- sions advantage for students from high-income families—legacy preferences, the weight placed on nonacademic ratings, and the differential recruitment of athletes from high-income families—and refill slots with students who have the same distribution of test scores as the current class. Such an admissions policy would increase the share of students attending Ivy-Plus colleges from the bottom 95% of the parental income distribution by 8.8 percentage points …

The selective private colleges that are the focus of this study are what economists sometimes call “donative nonprofits,” meaning that they rely on donations (and earnings from an endowment based on those donations) as a major form of income. From a financial point of view, it is unsurprising that a donative nonprofit–with the potential for large future donations in mind–would tend to favor children of alumni or those from the top 1% of the income distribution over other applicants with equivalent test scores. But it’s useful to be clear on what’s happening here: when these selective schools tell potential applicants that they don’t just look at test scores, but instead use a variety of nonacademic criteria like being “well-rounded” or “authentic” for admissions, the actual result of their process is that applicants from families in the top 1% of the income distribution are admitted at a higher rate than others with the same test scores.

New Year’s Day feels like a time to reminisce about times past, to speculate about times to come, and to reflect and worry about one’s place along the journey. A concern that I perhaps share with others is that the pathway to future happiness may seem like a narrow one, so that my choices could so easily turn out to be incorrect, with catastrophic long-term consequences. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay “On Self-Reliance” offers a number of reflections on this theme, include modern-sounding admonitions to trust your own intuition and ideas, and to push back as needed against social pressures and expectations.

The essay is perhaps best-known today for Emerson’s aphorism: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” In other words, feeling an internal pressure to “be consistent” is another of those social pressures and expectations that should be critiqued and reconsidered. (Of course, being automatically opposed to social pressures and expectations would be another example of a “foolish consistency.” And making a change rather than giving in to “foolish consistency,” but then feeling compelled to stick to the change as new experience and evidence emerges, may only exchange one foolish consistency for another. I suspect that Emerson underestimates the difficulties of discerning, enunciating, and believing in one’s own intuition and ideas. Also, the possibility of “foolish consistency” does not rule out the possibility that a wise consistency may be a hallmark of great minds. This stuff isn’t easy.)

But on this re-reading of Emerson’s essay, I was struck by a comment that he attibutes to Caliph Ali: “Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.”

The phrase appears as the saying numbered XV in a 1717 manuscript Sentences of Ali, Son-in-law of Mohamet, and his fourth successor, translated from an authentick Arabick manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, by Simon Ockley. Caliph Ali (c 600-661) was a cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad.

Imagine that looking for your true long-term happiness, for your destiny, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. If so, the task may seem impossible. But now imagine that you are rolling around the haystack, or perhaps more apropos, that the haystack is also rolling around you. You become much more likely to be pricked with that needle, whether you are carefully searching for it or not, especially if you remain sensitive to the presence of the needle. I know that I’m a lucky guy. But many of the deepest connections and joys in my personal and work life in large part seemed to come seeking after me, and my task was to notice when they pricked my attention. May you experience your destiny seeking you in the year to come.

In his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part 2 (1752, 1777), David Hume included a short essay titled “Of the Jealousy of Trade,” which speaks to certain sentiments of international trade in our own time, as well as his own. Hume wrote:

Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advances in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expence. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the encrease of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours; and that a state can scarcely carry its trade and industry very far, where all the surrounding states are buried in ignorance, sloth, and barbarism. …

Compare the situation of Great Britain at present, with what it was two centuries ago. All the arts both of agriculture and manufactures were then extremely rude and imperfect. Every improvement, which we have since made, has arisen from our imitation of foreigners; and we ought so far to esteem it happy, that they had previously made advances in arts and ingenuity. But this intercourse is still upheld to our great advantage: Notwithstanding the advanced state of our manufactures, we daily adopt, in every art, the inventions and improvements of our neighbours. The commodity is first imported from abroad, to our great discontent, while we imagine that it drains us of our money: Afterwards, the art itself is gradually imported, to our visible advantage: Yet we continue still to repine, that our neighbours should possess any art, industry, and invention; forgetting that, had they not first instructed us, we should have been at present barbarians; and did they not still continue their instructions, the arts must fall into a state of languor, and lose that emulation and novelty, which contribute so much to their advancement.

The encrease of domestic industry lays the foundation of foreign commerce. Where a great number of commodities are raised and perfected for the home-market, there will always be found some which can be exported with advantage. But if our neighbours have no art or cultivation, they cannot take them; because they will have nothing to give in exchange. In this respect, states are in the same condition as individuals. A single man can scarcely be industrious, where all his fellow-citizens are idle. The riches of the several members of a community contribute to encrease my riches, whatever profession I may follow. They consume the produce of my industry, and afford me the produce of theirs in return.

Nor needs any state entertain apprehensions, that their neighbours will improve to such a degree in every art and manufacture, as to have no demand from them. Nature, by giving a diversity of geniuses, climates, and soils, to different nations, has secured their mutual intercourse and commerce, as long as they all remain industrious and civilized. Nay, the more the arts encrease in any state, the more will be its demands from its industrious neighbours. The inhabitants, having become opulent and skilful, desire to have every commodity in the utmost perfection; and as they have plenty of commodities to give in exchange, they make large importations from every foreign country. The industry of the nations, from whom they import, receives encouragement: Their own is also encreased, by the sale of the commodities which they give in exchange.

But what if the result of these interactions is an imbalance of trade, with a mixture of trade surpluses and deficits? Hume has you covered here, as well, with a short essay “Of the Balance of Trade.” During Hume’s time, the primary concern was that if a nation had a trade deficit, it would experience an outflow of gold and silver. Hume points to several writers of his time who made dire predictions about what would happen with a sustained trade deficit. Then he points out that these dire predictions did not, in fact, come true. Similarly, the US economy has had trade deficits for about a half-century now, and while trade has disrupted certain industries (with real costs that deserve a policy response), it would be bloviating ignorance to claim that the US economy as a whole has been impoverished as a result.

Instead, Hume argues, as long as an economy remains productive, then trade imbalances are not a primary concern. He points out that paper currency can substitute for actual gold and silver if needed. Hume also offers a thought experiment: Surely there are trade imbalances within regions of a given country, and yet, the national economy proceeds forward. Hume writes:

How is the balance kept in the provinces of every kingdom among themselves, but by the force of this principle, which makes it impossible for money to lose its level, and either to rise or sink beyond the proportion of the labour and commodities which are in each province? Did not long experience make people easy on this head, what a fund of gloomy reflections might calculations afford to a melancholy Yorkshireman, while he computed and magnified the sums drawn to London by taxes, absentees, commodities, and found on comparison the opposite articles so much inferior? And no doubt, had the Heptarchy subsisted in England, the legislature of each state had been continually alarmed by the fear of a wrong balance; and as it is probable that the mutual hatred of these states would have been extremely violent on account of their close neighbourhood, they would have loaded and oppressed all commerce, by a jealous and superfluous caution. Since the union has removed the barriers between Scotland and England, which of these nations gains from the other by this free commerce? Or if the former kingdom has received any encrease of riches, can it reasonably be accounted for by any thing but the encrease of its art and industry? It was a common apprehension in England, before the union, as we learn from L’Abbe du Bos, that Scotland would soon drain them of their treasure, were an open trade allowed; and on the other side the Tweed a contrary apprehension prevailed: With what justice in both, time has shown. What happens in small portions of mankind, must take place in greater.

In 1933, John Maynard Keynes gave the first Finlay Lecture delivered at University College, Dublin, on the subject of “National Self-Sufficiency” (Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review,” June 1933, 22: 86, pp. 177-193). The Irish Free State of 1933 was a transition phase: after the Irish War of Independence that had ended in 1921, but before Ireland officially leaves the Commonwealth in 1949. Under the  Fianna Fáil party led by Éamon de Valera, Ireland at this time was pushing along many margins toward greater independence–and one of these margins was a trade war and retaliatory tariffs affecting trade between Ireland and the UK.

The early 1930s were also a time when many nations were exploring a wide array of alternative institutional arrangements: including Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, and Keynes’ own much milder proposals that instead of having the British government just send money to people during the Great Depression, it should be hiring those people to produce long-lasting goods like houses and roads. It’s also a time when the “first age of globalization” from the late 19th and early 20th century has crashed and global trade has contracted.

Thus, Keynes finds himself in his 1933 lecture reflecting on how his beliefs about free trade have evolved since several decades earlier. He begins:

I was brought up, like most Englishmen, to respect Free Trade not only as an economic doctrine which a rational and instructed person could not doubt, but almost as a part of the moral law. I regarded ordinary departures from it as being at the same time an imbecility and an outrage. I thought England’s unshakeable Free Trade convictions, maintained for nearly a hundred years, to be both the explanation before man and the justification before Heaven of her economic supremacy. As lately as 1928 I was writing that Free Trade was based on fundamental truths “which, stated with their due qualifications, no-one can dispute who is capable of understanding the meaning of the words.” Looking again to-day at the statements of these fundamental truths which I then gave, I do not find myself disputing them. Yet the orientation of my mind is changed ; and I share this change of mind with many others.

What form does this re-orientation take? One of the arguments for free trade in the first age of globalization was that it would lead to greater international peace. With the memories of World War I still very fresh, this promise had not been kept. Keynes:

We are pacifist to-day with so much strength of conviction that, if the economic internationalist could win this point, he would soon recapture our support. But it does not to-day seem obvious that a great concentration of national effort on the capture of foreign trade, that the penetration of a country’s economic structure by the resources and the influence of foreign capitalists, that a close dependence of our own economic life on the fluctuating economic policies of foreign countries are safeguards and assurances of international peace. It is easier, in the light of experience and foresight, to argue quite the contrary. The protection of a country’s existing foreign interests, the capture of new markets, the progress of economic imperialism–these are a scarcely avoidable part of a scheme of things which aims at the maximum of international specialisation and at the maximum geographical diffusion of capital wherever its seat of ownership. …

Take as an example the relations between England and Ireland. The fact that the economic interests of the two countries have been for generations closely intertwined has been no occasion or guarantee of peace. It may be true, I believe it is, that a large part of these economic relations are of such great economic advantage to both countries that it would be most foolish recklessly to disrupt them. But if you owed us no money, if we had never owned your land, if the exchange of goods were on a scale which made the question one of minor importance to the producers of both countries, it would be much easier to be friends.

I sympathise, therefore, with those who would minimise, rather than with those who would maximise, economic entanglement between nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel–these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily national. … For these strong reasons, therefore, I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation between countries, than existed in 1914, may tend to serve the cause of peace rather than otherwise. At any rate the age of economic internationalism was not particularly successful in avoiding war …

In our own time, it surely feels, from time to time, as if the economic ties between countries–say, between the US and China–are as much a source of geopolitical tension as a force for peace.

But what about the risk of losing the gains from trade? Keynes argues in 1933 that those gains are real, but in many industries not especially large. Thus, trading off some modest degree economic prosperity in exchange for greater freedom for a nation to experiment with its own desired economic/political model might be worthwhile. Here’s Keynes again:

But I am not persuaded that the economic advantages of the international division of labour to-day are at all comparable with what they were. I must not be understood to carry my argument beyond a certain point. A considerable degree of international specialisation is necessary in a rational world in all cases where it is dictated by wide differences of climate, natural resources native aptitudes, level of culture and density of population. But over an increasingly wide range of industrial products, and perhaps of agricultural products also, I become doubtful whether the economic loss of national self-sufficiency is great enough to outweigh the other advantages of gradually bringing the producer and the consumer within the ambit of the same national, economic and financial organisation. Experience accumulates to prove that most modern mass-production processes can be performed in most countries and climates with almost equal efficiency. Moreover, with greater wealth, both primary and manufactured products play a smaller relative part in the national economy compared with houses, personal services and local amenities which are not equally available for international exchange; with the result that a moderate increase in the real cost of the former consequent on greater national self-sufficiency may cease to be of serious consequence when weighed in the balance against advantages of a different kind. National self-sufficiency, in short, though it costs something, may be becoming a luxury which we can afford, if we happen to want it.

Keynes argues that different countries may wish to with to make “a variety of politico-economic experiments,” based on their own traditions and beliefs, without being held back by pressures related to international trade and finance.

Each year it becomes more obvious that the world is embarking on a variety of politico-economic experiments, and that different types of experiment appeal to different national temperaments and historical environments. The nineteenth century free-trader’s economic internationalism assumed that the whole world was, or would be, organised on a basis of private competitive capitalism and of the freedom of private contract inviolably protected by the sanctions of law–in various phases, of course, of complexity and development, but conforming to a uniform type which it would be the general object to perfect and certainly not to destroy. Nineteenth century protectionism was a blot upon the efficiency and good-sense of this scheme of things, but it did not modify the general presumption as to the fundamental characteristics of economic society.

But to-day one country after another abandons these presumptions. Russia is still alone in her particular experiment, but no longer alone in her abandonment of the old presumptions. Italy, Ireland, Germany, have cast their eyes or are casting them towards new modes of political economy. Many more countries after them, I predict, will seek, one by one, after new economic gods. Even countries such as Great Britain and the United States, which still conform par excellence to the old model, are striving, under the surface, after a new economic plan. We do not know what will be the outcome. We are–all of us, I expect–about to make many mistakes. No-one can tell which of the new systems will prove itself best.

But the point for my present discussion is this. We each have our own fancy. Not believing that we are saved already, we each would like to have a try at working out our own salvation. We do not wish, therefore, to be at the mercy of world forces working out, or trying to work out, some uniform equilibrium according to the ideal principles, if they can be called such, of laisser-faire capitalism. There are still those who cling to the old ideas, but in no country of the world to-day can they be reckoned as a serious force. We wish–for the time at least and so long as the present transitional, experimental phase endures–to be our own masters, and to be as free as we can make ourselves from the interferences of the outside world. Thus, regarded from this point of view, the policy of an increased national self-sufficiency is to be considered, not as an ideal in itself, but as directed to the creation of an environment in which other ideals can be safely and conveniently pursued.

The Great Depression of the early 1930s was a time when it seemed obvious to many observers that capitalism had failed. Looking back on the economic growth and industrial output of World War I, there was also a sense that strong government oversight of the economy–minus the world war–would generate better outcomes.

Keynes argues for a gradualist and experimental approach, which would steer clear of the disasters emerging (in different ways) in Russia and Germany. He argues that Ireland does benefit from its access to selling in British markets (a lesson largely ignored in our own time by those who advocated the Brexit from the European Union). Keynes also suggests that there will be a gap between the rhetoric and reality of those advocating alternative political-economic arrangements. Rhetoric can bring a party to power, but it then needs to govern with a sharp-eyed view to costs and consequences.

Words ought to be a little wild–for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking. But when the seats of power and authority have been attained, there should be no more poetic licence. We have, therefore, to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric had despised. An experimental society has need to be far more efficient than an old established one, if it is to survive safely. It will need all its economic margin for its own proper purposes and can afford to give nothing away to softheadedness or doctrinaire impracticability. When a doctrinaire proceeds to action, he must, so to speak, forget his doctrine.

Keynes was correct in 1933 that enormous experiments in what we sometimes now call a “mixed economy” were underway in high-income countries around the world: think of the much larger role of government in a social safety net, the transition from industrial to service-based economies, the evolution of the health care industry, the rise of enviromental and consumer-protection movements, and so on and so forth. Keynes was incorrect that these changes ruled out a new and more powerful wave of globalization, as we have seen in the last half-century. In my own view, Keynes underestimated what the gains from international trade in the future could be. Finally, his admonition that doctrinaires should count costs and practicalities, and moderate their own doctrine when in power, has only rarely been followed.

US economic growth can be divided into two parts: more hours worked, or more productivity per hour worked. In the past, the US labor force has been rising over time: the US labor force totaled 107 million people in 1980, 142 million in 2000, and was up to 171 million this year. However, after several decades of falling birthrates and population aging, US workforce growth has been slowing down. Future US economic growth will need to rely more heavily on higher productivity per hour–a change that is already underway.

Nathan Modica of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics offers some discussion in “Industry growth patterns: a closer look at output, productivity, and hours worked from 1990 to 2024” (Monthly Labor Review, December 2025).

Here’s an overall economy-wide view. Notice, for example, that productivity growth in the last six years or so (red bars) isn’t much different from the 1990s, but the annual gain in hours worked is much smaller.

Here’s a hours and output-per-hour breakdown by major sectors of the economy. Most of these industries had little change in hours worked from 1990-2024, and some had declining hours worked. The main exception where more hours were worked was in “Accommodation and food services.” Elsewhere, all or nearly all of the output gains are from higher productivity measured by output-per-hour, not more hours worked.

Modica offers a number of industry-level breakdowns. Here’s one for a subset of the “Accomodation and food services” category, broken down into “Limited service eating places” and “Full service restaurants.” The interesting shift here is that during the 1990s and into the 2000s, most of the output gains these businesses can be traced to more hours worked, with only modest changes in productivity. But since the pandemic, hours worked is barely up in Limited-service eating places and down substantially in Full-service restaurants, while productivity gains now represent the lion’s share of output growth in both categories.

The reason behind this change seems to be a lasting effect that was jump-started by the COVID pandemic: that is, more widespread use of take-out ordering.

The pandemic seems to have hastened the adoption of newer business practices and technologies in both restaurant industries, which could have boosted measured productivity in either industry. A survey from a trade association indicated that the shift to off-premises revenues accelerated during 2020 in all restaurant types. Later surveys confirmed that off-premises consumption in restaurants was still higher in 2021 than before the pandemic, concurrent with the drop in on-site dining. Even well after most pandemic restrictions loosened, off-premises dining remained higher in 2023 than in 2019 throughout the restaurant trade.

Complementary to the increase in off-site consumption was the expanded use of digital technologies like ordering, payments, and delivery-management online or with mobile apps. Again, this does not seem to be merely a short-term reaction to pandemic conditions. Market survey data from 2023 suggest that many full-service restaurant operators introduced delivery service during the pandemic—including many fine-dining establishments—and that most of those who introduced it planned to retain it.

Over at NPR Marketplace, Sarah Leeson got to wondering about what economists mean by a “widget.” This curiousity led her to my post about three years ago, “A Brief History of Widgets” (August 15, 2022). In turn, this led to a four-minute report on “How do `widgets’ fit into our services-based economy?” (NPR Marketplace, December 25, 2025). If you would like to listen me and others giggling about widgets–with some actual information mixed in–I commend the episode to your attention.

There’s a sort of parlor game that the economically-minded sometimes play around the Christmas holiday, related to A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Was Dickens writing his story as an attack on economics, capitalism, and selfishness? After all, his depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge, along with his use of phrases like “decrease the surplus population” and the sarcastic use of “a good man of business” would suggest as much, and a classic example of such an interpretation is here. Or was Dickens just telling a good story with distinct characters? After all, Scrooge is portrayed as an outlier in the business community. The warm portrayal of Mr. Fezziwig certainly opens the possibility that one can be a successful man of business as well as a good employer and a decent human being. And if Scrooge hadn’t saved money, would he have been able to save Tiny Tim?

It’s all a good “talker,” as they say about the topics that get kicked around on radio shows every day. As part of my own holiday break, I republish this essay each year near or on Christmas day.

I went looking for some other perspectives on how Charles Dickens perceived capitalism that were not embedded in a fictional setting. In particular, I checked the weekly journal Household Words, which Dickens edited from 1850 to 1859. Articles in Household Words do not have authors provided. However, Anne Lohrli went through the business and financial records of the publication, which identified the authors and showed who had been paid for each article. The internal records of the journal show that Dickens was the author of this piece from the issue of February 11, 1854, called “On Strike.” (Lohrli’s book is called Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-59, conducted by Charles Dickens, University of Toronto Press, 1973. Household Words is freely available on-line at a site hosted by the University of Buckingham, with support from the Leverhulme Trust and other donors.)

The article does not seem especially well-known today, but it is the source of a couple of the most common quotations from Charles Dickens about “political economy,” as the study of economics was usually called at the time. Early in the piece, Dickens wrote: “Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but … I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods.” Later in the article, Dickens wrote: “[P]olitical economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it.”

But more broadly, the article is of interest because Dickens, telling the story in the first person, takes the position that in thinking about a strike taking place in the town of Preston, one need not take the side either of management or labor. Instead, Dickens writes, one may “be a friend to both,” and feel that the strike is “to be deplored on all accounts.” Of course, the problem with a middle-of-the-road position is that you can end up being hit by ideological traffic going in both directions. But the ability of Dickens to sympathize with people in a wide range of positions is surely part what gives his novels and his world-view such lasting power. The article goes into a fair amount of detail, and can be read on-line, so I will content myself here with a substantial excerpt.

Here’s a portion of the 1854 essay by Dickens:

“ON STRIKE”

Travelling down to Preston a week from this date, I chanced to sit opposite to a very acute, very determined, very emphatic personage, with a stout railway rug so drawn over his chest that he looked as if he were sitting up in bed with his great coat, hat, and gloves on, severely contemplating your humble servant from behind a large blue and grey checked counterpane. In calling him emphatic, I do
not mean that he was warm; he was coldly and bitingly emphatic as a frosty wind is.

“You are going through to Preston, sir?” says he, as soon as we were clear of the
CharPrimrose Hill tunnel.

The receipt of this question was like the receipt of a jerk of the nose; he was so short and sharp.

“Yes.”

“This Preston strike is a nice piece of business!” said the gentleman. “A pretty piece of business!”

“It is very much to be deplored,” said I, “on all accounts.”

“They want to be ground. That’s what they want to bring ’em to their senses,” said the gentleman; whom I had already began to call in my own mind Mr. Snapper, and whom I may as well call by that name here as by any other. *

I deferentially enquired, who wanted to be ground?

“The hands,” said Mr. Snapper. ” The hands on strike, and the hands who help ’em.”

I remarked that if that was all they wanted, they must be a very unreasonable people, for surely they had had a little grinding, one way and another, already. Mr. Snapper eyed me with sternness, and after opening and shutting his leathern-gloved hands several times outside his counterpane, asked me
abruptly, ” Was I a delegate?”

I set Mr. Snapper right on that point, and told him I was no delegate.

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Snapper. “But a friend to the Strike, I believe?”

“Not at all,” said I.

“A friend to the Lock-out?” pursued Mr. Snapper.

“Not in the least,” said I,

Mr. Snapper’s rising opinion of me fell again, and he gave me to understand that a man must either be a friend to the Masters or a friend to the Hands.

“He may be a friend to both,” said I.

Mr. Snapper didn’t see that; there was no medium in the Political Economy of the subject. I retorted on Mr. Snapper, that Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but that I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods. Mr. Snapper tucked himself up as if to keep me off, folded his arms on the top of his counterpane, leaned back and looked out of the window.

“Pray what would you have, sir,” enquire Mr. Snapper, suddenly withdrawing his eyes from the prospect to me, “in the relations between Capital and Labour, but Political Economy?”

I always avoid the stereotyped terms in these discussions as much as I can, for I have observed, in my little way, that they often supply the place of sense and moderation. I therefore took my gentleman up with the words employers and employed, in preference to Capital and Labour.

“I believe,” said I, “that into the relations between employers and employed, as into all the relations of this life, there must enter something of feeling and sentiment; something of mutual explanation, forbearance, and consideration; something which is not to be found in Mr. M’CulIoch’s dictionary, and is not exactly stateable in figures; otherwise those relations are wrong and rotten at the core and will never bear sound fruit.”

Mr. Snapper laughed at me. As I thought I had just as good reason to laugh at Mr. Snapper, I did so, and we were both contented. …

Mr. Snapper had no doubt, after this, that I thought the hands had a right to combine?

“Surely,” said I. ” A perfect right to combine in any lawful manner. The fact of their being able to combine and accustomed to combine may, I can easily conceive, be a protection to them. The blame even of this business is not all on one side. I think the associated Lock-out was a grave error. And
when you Preston masters—”

“I am not a Preston master,” interrupted Mr. Snapper.

“When the respectable combined body of Preston masters,” said I, ” in the beginning of this unhappy difference, laid down the principle that no man should be employed henceforth who belonged to any combination—such as their own—they attempted to carry with a high hand a partial and unfair impossibility, and were obliged to abandon it. This was an unwise proceeding, and the first defeat.”

Mr. Snapper had known, all along, that I was no friend to the masters.

“Pardon me,” said I; ” I am unfeignedly a friend to the masters, and have many friends among them.”

“Yet you think these hands in the right?” quoth Mr. Snapper.

“By no means,” said I; ” I fear they are at present engaged in an unreasonable struggle, wherein they began ill and cannot end well.”

Mr. Snapper, evidently regarding me as neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, begged to know after a pause if he might enquire whether I was going to Preston on business?

Indeed I was going there, in my unbusinesslike manner, I confessed, to look at the strike.

“To look at the strike!” echoed Mr. Snapper fixing his hat on firmly with both hands. “To look at it! Might I ask you now, with what object you are going to look at it?”

“Certainly,” said I. ” I read, even in liberal pages, the hardest Political Economy—of an extraordinary description too sometimes, and certainly not to be found in the books—as the only touchstone of this strike. I see, this very day in a to-morrow’s liberal paper, some astonishing novelties in the politico-economical way, showing how profits and wages have no connexion whatever; coupled with such references to these hands as might be made by a very irascible General to rebels and brigands in arms. Now, if it be the case that some of the highest virtues of the working people still shine through them brighter than ever in their conduct of this mistake of theirs, perhaps the fact may reasonably suggest to me—and to others besides me—that there is some little things wanting in the relations between them and their employers, which neither political economy nor Drum-head proclamation writing will altogether supply, and which we cannot too soon or too temperately unite in trying to
find out.”

Mr. Snapper, after again opening and shutting his gloved hands several times, drew the counterpane higher over his chest, and went to bed in disgust. He got up at Rugby, took himself and counterpane into another carriage, and left me to pursue my journey alone. …

In any aspect in which it can be viewed, this strike and lock-out is a deplorable calamity. In its waste of time, in its waste of a great people’s energy, in its waste of wages, in its waste of wealth that seeks to be employed, in its encroachment on the means of many thousands who are labouring from day to day, in the gulf of separation it hourly deepens between those whose interests must be understood to be identical or must be destroyed, it is a great national affliction. But, at this pass, anger is of no use, starving out is of no use—for what will that do, five years hence, but overshadow all the mills in England with the growth of a bitter remembrance? —political economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it. Gentlemen are found, in great manufacturing towns, ready enough to extol imbecile mediation with dangerous madmen abroad; can none of them be brought to think of authorised mediation and explanation at home? I do not suppose that such a knotted difficulty as this, is to be at all untangled by a morning-party in the Adelphi; but I would entreat both sides now so miserably opposed, to consider whether there are no men in England above suspicion, to whom they might refer the matters in dispute, with a perfect confidence above all things in the desire of those men to act justly, and in their sincere attachment to their countrymen of every rank and to their country.

Masters right, or men right; masters wrong, or men wrong; both right, or both wrong; there is certain ruin to both in the continuance or frequent revival of this breach. And from the ever-widening circle of their decay, what drop in the social ocean shall be free!

Charles Dickens wrote what has become one of the iconic stories of Christmas day and Christmas spirit in A Christmas Carol. But of course, the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge are a story, not a piece of reporting. Here’s a piece by Dickens written for the weekly journal Household Words that he edited from 1850 to 1859. It’s from the issue of January 26, 1856, with his first-person reporting on “A Nightly Scene in London.” Poverty in high-income countries is no longer as ghastly as in Victorian England, but for those who take the time to see it in our own time and place, surely it is ghastly enough. Thus, I repeat this post each year on Christmas Day.

Economists might also wince just a bit at how Dickens describes the reaction of some economists to poverty, those who Dickens calls “the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school.” In the following passage, Dickens writes: “I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity …” 

Here’s a fuller passage from Dickens:

A NIGHTLY SCENE IN LONDON

On the fifth of last November, I, the Conductor of this journal, accompanied by a friend well-known to the public, accidentally strayed into Whitechapel. It was a miserable evening; very dark, very muddy, and raining hard.

There are many woful sights in that part of London, and it has been well-known to me in most of its aspects for many years. We had forgotten the mud and rain in slowly walking along and looking about us, when we found ourselves, at eight o’clock, before the Workhouse.

Crouched against the wall of the Workhouse, in the dark street, on the muddy pavement-stones, with the rain raining upon them, were five bundles of rags. They were motionless, and had no resemblance to the human form. Five great beehives, covered with rags— five dead bodies taken out of graves, tied neck and heels, and covered with rags— would have looked like those five bundles upon which the rain rained down in the public street.

“What is this! ” said my companion. “What is this!”

“Some miserable people shut out of the Casual Ward, I think,” said I.

We had stopped before the five ragged mounds, and were quite rooted to the spot by their horrible appearance. Five awful Sphinxes by the wayside, crying to every passer-by, ” Stop and guess! What is to be the end of a state of society that leaves us here!”

As we stood looking at them, a decent working-man, having the appearance of a stone-mason, touched me on the shoulder.

“This is an awful sight, sir,” said he, “in a Christian country!”

“GOD knows it is, my friend,” said I.

“I have often seen it much worse than this, as I have been going home from my work. I have counted fifteen, twenty, five-and-twenty, many a time. It’s a shocking thing to see.”

“A shocking thing, indeed,” said I and my companion together. The man lingered near
us a little while, wished us good-night, and went on.

We should have felt it brutal in us who had a better chance of being heard than the working-man, to leave the thing as it was, so we knocked at the Workhouse Gate. I undertook to be spokesman. The moment the gate was opened by an old pauper, I went in, followed close by my companion. I lost no
time in passing the old porter, for I saw in his watery eye a disposition to shut us out.

“Be so good as to give that card to the master of the Workhouse, and say I shall be glad to speak to him for a moment.”

We were in a kind of covered gateway, and the old porter went across it with the card. Before he had got to a door on our left, a man in a cloak and hat bounced out of it very sharply, as if he were in the nightly habit of being bullied and of returning the compliment.

“Now, gentlemen,” said he in a loud voice, “what do you want here?”

“First,” said I, ” will you do me the favor to look at that card in your hand. Perhaps you may know my name.”

“Yes,” says he, looking at it. ” I know this name.”

“Good. I only want to ask you a plain question in a civil manner, and there is not the least occasion for either of us to be angry. It would be very foolish in me to blame you, and I don’t blame you. I may find fault with the system you administer, but pray understand that I know you are here to do a duty pointed out to you, and that I have no doubt you do it. Now, I hope you won’t object to tell me what I want to know.”

“No,” said he, quite mollified, and very reasonable, ” not at all. What is it?”

“Do you know that there are five wretched creatures outside?”

“I haven’t seen them, but I dare say there are.”

“Do you doubt that there are?”

“No, not at all. There might be many more.”

”Are they men? Or women?”

“Women, I suppose. Very likely one or two of them were there last night, and the night before last.”

“There all night, do you mean?”

“Very likely.”

My companion and I looked at one another, and the master of the Workhouse added quickly, “Why, Lord bless my soul, what am I to do? What can I do ? The place is full. The place is always full—every night. I must give the preference to women with children, mustn’t I? You wouldn’t have me not do that?”

“Surely not,” said I. “It is a very humane principle, and quite right; and I am glad to hear of it. Don’t forget that I don’t blame you.”

“Well!” said he. And subdued himself again. …

“Just so. I wanted to know no more. You have answered my question civilly and readily, and I am much obliged to you. I have nothing to say against you, but quite the contrary. Good night!”

“Good night, gentlemen!” And out we came again.

We went to the ragged bundle nearest to the Workhouse-door, and I touched it. No movement replying, I gently shook it. The rags began to be slowly stirred within, and by little and little a head was unshrouded. The head of a young woman of three or four and twenty, as I should judge; gaunt with want, and foul with dirt; but not naturally ugly.

“Tell us,” said I, stooping down. “Why are you lying here?”

“Because I can’t get into the Workhouse.”

She spoke in a faint dull way, and had no curiosity or interest left. She looked dreamily at the black sky and the falling rain, but never looked at me or my companion.

“Were you here last night?”

“Yes, All last night. And the night afore too.”

“Do you know any of these others?”

“I know her next but one. She was here last night, and she told me she come out of Essex. I don’t know no more of her.”

“You were here all last night, but you have not been here all day?”

“No. Not all day.”

“Where have you been all day?”

“About the streets.”

”What have you had to eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Come!” said I. “Think a little. You are tired and have been asleep, and don’t quite consider what you are saying to us. You have had something to eat to-day. Come! Think of it!”

“No I haven’t. Nothing but such bits as I could pick up about the market. Why, look at me!”

She bared her neck, and I covered it up again.

“If you had a shilling to get some supper and a lodging, should you know where to get it?”

“Yes. I could do that.”

“For GOD’S sake get it then!”

I put the money into her hand, and she feebly rose up and went away. She never thanked me, never looked at me— melted away into the miserable night, in the strangest manner I ever saw. I have seen many strange things, but not one that has left a deeper impression on my memory than the dull impassive way in which that worn-out heap of misery took that piece of money, and was lost.

One by one I spoke to all the five. In every one, interest and curiosity were as extinct as in the first. They were all dull and languid. No one made any sort of profession or complaint; no one cared to look at me; no one thanked me. When I came to the third, I suppose she saw that my companion and I glanced, with a new horror upon us, at the two last, who had dropped against each other in their sleep, and were lying like broken images. She said, she believed they were young sisters. These were the only words that were originated among the five.

And now let me close this terrible account with a redeeming and beautiful trait of the poorest of the poor. When we came out of the Workhouse, we had gone across the road to a public house, finding ourselves without silver, to get change for a sovereign. I held the money in my hand while I was speaking to the five apparitions. Our being so engaged, attracted the attention of many people of the very poor sort usual to that place; as we leaned over the mounds of rags, they eagerly leaned over us to see and hear; what I had in my hand, and what I said, and what I did, must have been plain to nearly all the concourse. When the last of the five had got up and faded away, the spectators opened to let us pass; and not one of them, by word, or look, or gesture, begged of us.

Many of the observant faces were quick enough to know that it would have been a relief to us to have got rid of the rest of the money with any hope of doing good with it. But, there was a feeling among them all, that their necessities were not to be placed by the side of such a spectacle; and they opened a way for us in profound silence, and let us go.

My companion wrote to me, next day, that the five ragged bundles had been upon his bed all night. I debated how to add our testimony to that of many other persons who from time to time are impelled to write to the newspapers, by having come upon some shameful and shocking sight of this description. I resolved to write in these pages an exact account of what we had seen, but to wait until after Christmas, in order that there might be no heat or haste. I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity; and I address people with a respect for the spirit of the New Testament, who do mind such things, and who think them infamous in our streets.

It’s become commonplace to observe that the modern economy is clearly about more than land, raw materials, and hours of labor. It’s about attention, intention, and motivation–and economic forces will seek to value and monetize these traits just as much as they will value steel or pizza.

Back in 1971, for example, Herbert Simon (Nobel ’78) was writing: “Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a  need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information resources that might consume it.” More recently, economists are suggesting the possibility that artificial intelligence technologies may lead from a shift from an “information economy,” based on collecting and selling information, to a “intention economy,” based on using that information to influence what people intend. There’s a saying that encapsulates the idea that your information and attention are being marketed, perhaps in a way that will be used to influence your decisions: “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product.”

In “The Economics of Attention,” George Loewenstein and Zachary Wojtowicz pull together the existing economic research on this topic (Journal of Economic Literature, September 2025, 63: 3, 1038–89, or you can also download ungated versions from several places, like here). In the abstract, they write:

Attention is an important resource in the modern economy and plays an increasingly prominent role in economic analysis. We summarize research on attention from both psychology and economics with a particular emphasis on its capacity to explain documented violations of classical economic theory. We also identify promising new directions for research, including attention-based utility, the recent proliferation of attentional externalities introduced by digital technology, the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the economics of attention, and the significant role that boredom, curiosity, and other motivational states play in determining how people allocate attention.

The review is comprehensive, and I make no effort to do justice to it here. But I was struck by how much of the focus of the existing economic reseach is focused on the attention of possible and actual consumers–that is, in shaping what people are willling to buy and willing to pay. For example, the authors write:

Globally, the average person now spends about six and a half hours on the internet each day, and one-third of US adults report that they are online “almost constantly.” Many of today’s most profitable businesses, such as internet search and social media, generate revenue through “user engagement,” which effectively means attracting and redirecting individuals’ attention. Increasingly, attention has become a commodity that can be bought, sold, and even “fracked” or “stolen” …

Of course, one way of dealing with information and attention constraints is to use social media, like this blog, to make first contact with ideas in a more time-efficient way.

Attention manifests itself not just as a matter of consumption choices, but also in the actions of employees. The authors do discuss this topic as well (did I mention that this is a comprehensive review?). For example, they write (citations omitted):

[M]aintaining focus can engender motivational states, such as boredom, curiosity, flow, and mental effort. The hedonic impact of attentional motivation forms a significant portion of the overall utility people derive from many productive activities. Thus, the joys and sorrows of work are, in many instances, the pleasures and pains of maintaining attentional focus.

Workplace boredom, in particular, is an extremely common challenge, especially for repetitive tasks that nevertheless require high levels of sustained vigilance over time, such as tumor detection in mammography and baggage screening for air travel. … [B]oredom generates psychic disutility that increases the extrinsic rewards required to incentivize people to maintain focus, thus driving wages above the economic opportunity cost of time …

In education, a parallel insight has spawned a literature on educational achievement that distinguishes between intelligence and “cognitive endurance”—the ability to sustain attention to difficult tasks over time. … [T]he limited resource of cognitive control plays a key role in determining why and when maintaining attention to a task is aversive. Limited cognitive endurance has been linked to declining performance over time in fields ranging from medicine to school examinations. Individual differences in cognitive endurance predict wages and educational outcomes such as college attendance, college quality, and college graduation, even after controlling for a fatigue-free measure of ability. There is some evidence, however, that cognitive endurance can be improved through practice, with benefits for educational outcomes.

We all know that we live in an economy focused on services and information. For many of us, our jobs are about absorbing information, paying attention, and the responding in a way that shapes and alters the original information. In that world, an stronger powers of cognitive endurance seems like an increasingly important skill for many jobs–including many of those conventionally listed as low-skill, as well as medium- and high-skill.