_Nickel and Dimed_, pp. 202-203: "In fact wages have risen, or did rise, anyway, between 1996 and 1999.... Obviously we have one of those debates over whether the glass is half empty or half full; the increases that seem to have mollified many economists do not seem so impressive to me.... When I persisted in my carping to the economists, they generally backed down a bit, conceding that while wages at the bottom are going up, they're not going up very briskly. Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, who had at the beginning of our conversation taken the half-full perspective, heightened the mystery when he observed that productivity--to which wages are theoretically tied--has been rising at such a healthy clip that 'workers should be getting much more'."* *[Interview, July 18, 2000]
You can start calling him Larry "half-full" Mishel, or Larry "Polyanna" Mishel, or Larry "trickle down" Mishel...
Brad DeLong