Re: alternate universe on income inequality

[Daniel Davies <dsquared@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

it's tricks with numbers.  It's not "the percentage of people in the bottom two quintiles".  It's "the percentage of people earning $xK".  So the economic growth of the last 35 years is counted as an improvement in income equality.  Also note that "improvement over the last 35 years" in this context means "improvement in the 1970s and early 1980s, almost all given back in the late 1980s and 1990s and a bit of an improvement in the last five years".

 

I wrote my own bit on this for my weblog, with a certain amount of "edge":

 

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002321.html

 

cheers

 

dd

-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Joel Blau
Sent: 22 September 2004 23:15
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: alternate universe on income inequality

Yes, but what specifically is wrong with the table showing that the percentage of people in bottom two quintiles has declined? I can't figure out what they've done to invert virtually everyone else's conclusions.

Joel Blau

Devine, James wrote:

on the question of the income distribution being increasingly unequal, I'd assume that the H foundation was _a priori_ wrong. Maybe on some other subject, they're like a stopped clock, right twice a day. I can't think of what subject that is. 

The problem with that foundation is their values -- which bias their research -- and the money which pays them to bias that research. It's like expecting reasonable research out of the Tobacco Institute. 

Don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends are ultra-right-wing reactionary scum... 

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine 

-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of David B.
Shemano
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 2:14 PM
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] alternate universe on income inequality


Michael Perelman writes:

I first saw the Kling article on the Heritage Fdn. site.  

Nuff said.

Why "Nuff said?"  Is the Heritage Foundation a priori always 
wrong?  I bet if they published something you agreed with, 
you would go around emphasizing how even the Heritage 
Foundation agrees with you, so you must be right.

David Shemano