Why drinkers earn more than nondrinkers (2006) | Hacker News Reader

Why drinkers earn more than nondrinkers (2006)

reason.org

9 pointsranit89 comments

Over the years I've worked in many advertising agencies and from what I have seen, socializing definitely increases capital gain.

All the ad boys going out for drinks at the end of the day (every day) and over time seeing complete morons being promoted into positions and roles they wouldn't qualify for if they'd gone for any decent job interview.

Unfortunately, all this socializing is very un-hackerish and might be the reason many programmers always seem to miss the boat when it comes to a decent salary.

Why should the causality go this way? Perhaps rich people drink and go to bars because they can afford it. I'm quite unimpressed with their logic

I think it's a bigger stretch to propose that social drinking is the preserve of the rich.

Intelligent people are also supposedly more likely to drink heavily

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundament... (I know, the source leaves a little to be desired)

Is this serious? Correlation != causation. A PhD should know that.

Kneejerk pseudo-knowledgeable response there.

They are not claiming causation. They are hypothesizing correlation between drinking and sociability/social network size, and causation from that to higher earnings.

"We hypothesize that drinking leads to higher earnings by increasing social capital."

The hypothesis seems to be that drinking makes people like you and that gets you better jobs.

As opposed to being social getting you better jobs and making you drink more, or having a better job allowing you to drink and be social, two alternate explanations which seem a lot more likely to me.

right, except for the bit where they suggest that we should encourage drinking to boost earnings. It is the absolute definition of the correlation/causation mistake. They also got a positive coefficient on the Divorced variable - I guess we should encourage divorces to boost the economy?

Beside, showing that drinkers earn more does not show that drinking is an overall economic boon as the first sentence implies. It could as easily mean that drinkers simply get a bigger slice of the pie.

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