Football Parable

A good friend of ThreeSources sends a link to a piece by Stephen Malanga in RealClearPolitics. Malanga is studying the income distribution in the NFL and finds it maps pretty closely to the US labor force in dreaded "income inequality."

In football, it seems that while all incomes have risen, those for top talent have risen faster (Alan Reynolds, call your office!)

Facing such a dynamic in the labor market, there are a few things a society may be able to do to narrow the income gap for some people, like ensuring that public schools do the best job possible preparing kids for college, so that those with the potential for college don’t get their aspirations quashed because they’re stuck in a bad system.

But in a world in which not everyone is cut out to earn college or post-graduate degrees, as long as the economy keeps valuing the sheepskin so much it may be difficult to restrain income inequality. The goal in that case is to continue to ensure that the overall economy keeps growing so that everyone’s pie gets bigger, even if it’s impossible to micromanage how the pie is cut up.

You have to read this one in full. My emailer suggests a better world if we were to all learn from football parables and suggests "What is Lombardi's render unto Lombardi..."

Economics and Markets Posted by jk at May 29, 2008 10:37 AM