TIME CONSTRAINTS AND THE RICH.

TIME CONSTRAINTS AND THE RICH. As I posted here, I still remember how in my first class in economics, I was struck by Meyer Burstein’s statement that we would be studying the allocation of scarce resources among competing wants. Usually, economists address how people’s choices are limited by their incomes. But the fixed amount of time we have can also be a budget constraint. This article by Jordan Weissmann in the Atlantic (July 9) describes research by Professor Daniel Hamermesh published in 2005 which concluded that in four different countries, wealthier people are more likely than the poor to complain about being busy (Hamermesh analyzed time-use surveys from the United States, Germany, Australia, and South Korea). Although the rich can hire people to perform services for them, there are limits to what other people can do for you. Hamermesh says “You can’t pay somebody to read Proust for you…. or go to a ballgame.” Hamermesh generalizes: “If you’re rich, it’s time that’s scarce. If you’re poor, it’s the money that’s scarce.”