
Kinky Labour Supply and the Attention Tax - barry-cotter
https://devonzuegel.com/post/kinky-labor-supply-and-the-attention-tax
======
barry-cotter
> Over the past few decades, labor force participation has sharply dropped for
> men ages 20-34. Theories about the root cause range from indolence, to a
> lack of skills and training, to offshoring, to (perhaps most interestingly)
> the increasing attractiveness and availability of leisure and media
> entertainment. In this essay, we propose that the drop in labor
> participation rate of young men is a result of a combination of factors: (i)
> a decrease in cost of access to media entertainment leisure, (ii) increases
> in both the availability and (iii) quality media entertainment leisure, and
> (iv) a decrease in the marginal signalling utility of (conspicuous)
> consumption goods for all but the highest earners. At the macro level, this
> results in sub-optimal production, as firms are unable to satisfy their
> demand for labor via the usual mechanism of increasing wages. If you believe
> that economic productivity and growth are good, this presents a challenge
> when attempting to design stimulus policy, because subsidies or increases to
> the minimum wage would yield the same non-result as firms increasing wages.
> We discuss the potential efficacy of the somewhat radical idea of a tax on
> human attention or time spent consuming entertainment media as a way to
> stimulate productivity.

