Walking out of Econ 10

Said Harvardian students of Mankiw:
"Shall we occupy seats here? No thank you!
We simply despise
Inequality's rise,
Among whose enablers we rank you."

The professor replied in an entry:
"You need learning that's more supplement'ry
Before jousting the rich
With your knowledge base, which,
Like my lectures, is quite element'ry."

One of the recent highlights of the Occupy movement was the walkout last month of some of the Harvard freshmen in Professor Greg Mankiw's Economics 10 introductory class. The students asserted that "the biased nature of Ec10 contributes to and symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America." Though the story has faded from the front pages, the Professor is continually asked about it, and gave his thoughts in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday. While acknowledging that claims of inherent conservative bias in the economics field are not new, Prof. Mankiw prefers to cite Keynes' view that

The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique for thinking, which helps the possessor to draw correct conclusions.

Wage Index Report

The data on wages disclose
That the specter of joblessness grows,
Except for the few
Making mega-bucks, who,
In their number, substantially rose.

The Social Security Administration released its Wage Statistics for 2010, and - with one glaring exception - they tell a sorry tale.   Journalist and author David Cay Johnston crunched the numbers and found that

There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year except at the very top, where the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999. The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million.

Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz, who notes the obvious statistical underpinning for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

To The Point

America's unequal strata,
As confirmed by definitive data,
Have made it quite plain,
On Wall Street and Main,
That something is deeply the matta.

Preoccupied with Wall Street

Said the protesting, earnest young bands,
In their Occupy Wall Street demands:
"With a shortage of jobs
Comes a surfeit of mobs
With way too much time on our hands."

The Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan preoccupied the New York Police Department over the weekend, in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge that resulted in 700 arrests. The protesters also captivated the attention of millions and inspired similar movements in cities including Chicago, L.A., Montreal and Melbourne.  Occupy Wall Street appears to be an organic movement that feeds on a generalized anger at the state of politics and the economy.  Though there is no set list of demands, one protester perhaps summed up the grievances best:

"From 2006-2009 I owned a business with 12 employees. I closed my doors in 2009. I lost my home in 2010. I lived in my truck for six months. Now I rent a tiny room. I have no health insurance."