SocraticGadfly: Buffalo professor gets a piece of my mind

March 11, 2005

Buffalo professor gets a piece of my mind

University of Buffalo professor John Della Contrada and Isaac Ehrlich claim Social Security causes delayed marriage and lower fertility rates.

The report, based on a paper by Ehrlich posted here, should fool nobody, as Ehrlich has worked with the University of Chicago’s Gary Becker on privatization and was a former economics professor there himself.

I responded to Dell Contrada, as his link was on the U. Buff story, and through him to Ehrlich:
Mr. Ehrlich, you have either unwittingly fallen for, or else willfully engaged in, a classic "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy by claiming a causal correlation from an apparent statistical correlation between delayed marriage and social security-type benefits.

Given sociological trends around the world over the last century or two, I could make many similar nonsense conclusions:

1. Electric lighting causes delayed marriage.
2. Fewer people farming in a country causes delayed marriage
3. Increased mechanization causes delayed marriage
Etc., etc.

Given your former professorate at the University of Chicago and work with Gary Becker, I have no doubt your engaging in such illogic on the economics of Social Security was willful, perverse, and academically unethical.

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