Must-Read: Eduardo Porter: Big Mac Test Shows Job Market Is Not Working to Distribute Wealth

…declined over the first decade of the millennium widely across the industrialized world. ‘It’s puzzling that we can get away with paying so little for what are really terrible jobs,’ Professor Ashenfelter told me…. The job market–that most critical institution of capitalist societies, the principal vehicle to distribute the nation’s wealth among its people–is not working properly. This raises a fundamental question: If the job market cannot keep hardworking people out of poverty and spread prosperity more broadly, how will it be done? Is public assistance our future?… Something is not working right for a majority of Americans. Maybe it’s time to try something different.