The Wage Standard

The Wage Standard is [[ArinDube|Arin Dube]]’s labor-economics book in The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough. The Planet Money episode uses the book as the source of its argument that Labor Monopsony is a central modern wage problem, not only a textbook curiosity.

The book’s wiki role is to connect wage stagnation, minimum-wage evidence, Non-Compete Agreements, Labor Search Frictions, and Labor Market Counterforces into one worker-power branch. The episode does not deeply review the whole book; it uses Alien as an accessible demonstration of the problem the book foregrounds.

Connections

• Arin Dube / Arindrajit Dube - author and episode guest.
• Labor Monopsony - central labor-market power problem.
• Compensating Differentials, Shrouded Job Attributes, and Monopsony By Artifice - concepts illustrated through the Alien discussion.
• Planet Money - source show using the book as an explanatory anchor.