Thursday, April 19, 2012

Linkages

Education the reason for inequality? Wrong. Also not disappearance of "middle-skill jobs".

The New Republic on point on the inequality debate? Color me impressed:
A growing body of evidence suggests that greater income inequality translates into lower mobility; as Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution has observed, it gets harder to climb the ladder as the rungs grow farther apart.
...
The "claimed shift toward inequality can be made to disappear." No, it can't. When you correct for household size (a lot more of us live alone than used to be the case) you find the level of income inequality to be lower, but the rate at which it's growing to be faster.
...
[W]hile changes in our tax code did not contribute materially to this increase [in inequality], they did nothing to mitigate it; if we want to use taxation to reduce this alarming gap between the top and the rest of us, we’ll have to broaden the debate far beyond its current bounds.
The right still running with Burkhauser's analysis:
The president's claims are based on the initial research [!] on income inequality from 1913 to 1998 by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, [according to which] median American incomes rose just 3.2% from 1979 through 2007, with all figures adjusted for inflation.
...
However, a new study entitled “A Second Opinion on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class” by Cornell University researchers led by Richard Burkhauser, found that when properly measured, the median household income rose 36.7%, not 3.2%.
...
Ed Morrissey stated in his post on the new study that “the bottom line is clear: there is no income-inequality 'crisis.' At best it’s a misunderstanding of the data based on incomplete and irregular analysis, and at worst, it’s a demagogic lie intended to divide Americans along false lines. In fact, it’s most likely both.”
Just a reminder: Burkhauser's study still cruelly imprisoned behind paywall. Set it free.

No comments:

Post a Comment