Re: Postrel on liberalization

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 12:19:18 -0400 "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just as I suspected, if 1985 values of $1/day only gets you $532/year in 1996, I
> would like to buy your house at the same inflation rate.

First of all, you suspected no such thing.
You claimed that he used nominal values.
He did not.

Second of all, please indicate the price index
you rely on to suggest he has chosen the inflation
rate inappropriately.  He works with about 4%/yr,
which tracks the CPI over that period.

> Also, you may notice that under market fundamentalism, the $1/day is achieved by the
> government abandonoing free health care, education, subsidized housing and all other
> social programs. Some progress!

This is simply a non-sequitur.  The issue is simple:
who is more accurately representing the trends in
world income distribution?

Attacking a study because you do not like its conclusions
is not very pretty, but it is even less pretty when the
attacks grow so desperately irrelevant.

Cheers,
Alan

PS Health care and education are of course never free.  I
happen to agree that they should be government subsidized,
and in particular that adults should be taxed to ensure that
kids get access, but let's not pretend that they are not
paid for.  Of course this is all entirely tangential to any
discussion of the validity of Sala-i-Martin's results.