“Since the mid-1970s, the gap between rich and poor has grown considerably. One of best analyses of this long-term trend is by the Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology.” The authors conclude that widening inequality is largely a symptom of […]
Archive for the 'Inequality' Category
Dec23rd2010
“The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless. For instance, there is usually greater inequality of income among both older people and the more highly educated, if only because there is […]
Dec21st2010
“I don’t know how much money you make. But whatever it is, I wish you and everyone else would work twice as many hours and earn twice as much income. Why? With one exception (discussed below) your earning more money can’t possibly harm me. In three very important ways it will […]
Dec16th2010
A good friend of mine, recently turned lefty, has been harping on the income inequality tune lately. It’s new to him, so he finds it quit convincing. We’ve been going back and forth on it now for some months (see here and here, for example) but he tried to address all of my arguments in one […]
Feb22nd2010
“Scientists now think that King Tut may have died of malaria….this is a good excuse to meditate on just how rich we are. King Tut was probably the wealthiest man in the world during his time. He died of something that wouldn’t kill the most abjectly immiserated welfare mother in the United States today, because […]
Aug29th2008
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Economics, Education, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Inequality and Poverty. 0 Comments“Fifty percent of the variance in inequality in lifetime earnings is determined by age 18. The family plays a powerful role in shaping adult outcomes that is not fully recognised by current American policies. As programs are currently configured, interventions early in the lives of disadvantaged children have substantially higher economic returns than later interventions […]
Apr10th2008
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, Inequality and ModernPolitics. 8 Comments“What the American people really should feel awkward and defensive about is the level of inequality and excess of political power. Instead of asking ourselves what we can do about Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, we should be asking ourselves about what we can do about the Clintons and the Spitzers. Those who want more […]
Apr7th2008
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Capitalism, Economics, General and Inequality. 0 Comments“Krugman and Bartels think the problem is the influence rich people have on public opinion and the policy process….They also keep banging straight into the problem that if government is empowered to heavily affect people’s fortunes, then people with the biggest fortunes will have the most at stake when it comes to influencing government. The […]
Apr1st2008
“We examine changes in the characteristics of American youth between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, with a focus on characteristics that matter for labor market success. We reweight the NLSY79 to look like the NLSY97 along a number of dimensions that are related to labor market success, including race, gender, parental background, education, […]
Mar11th2008
Brad Schiller, professor of economics at American University and the University of Nevada, Reno writes on the inequality myth:
While there is some substance to these fears of widening inequality and middle-class stagnation, the situation is not nearly as clear-cut. Demographic changes in the size and composition of U.S. households have distorted the statistics in important […]
Dec13th2007
Arthur Laffer On President Clinton And The Economy
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, Inequality, ModernPolitics, Poverty and Taxes. 5 CommentsI met Arthur Laffer in July of this year, at the Libertarians FreedomFest Convention in Las Vegas. I found him to be, by far, the most entertaining and provocative speaker (He is also, btw, a HUGE illegal immigration supporter). Since then, I added him to my “Must Read Anything They Write” list of economists. […]
Nov27th2007
The Importance Of Early Education And School Choice’s Part
Published by in Economics, Education, General, Inequality and Vouchers. 0 Comments“Dutch parents can indeed choose their children’s school. The schools are good, even though the country spends less on education than the OECD average. And, crucially, Dutch schools are selective - something that Britain supposedly lost when it abolished most grammar schools in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas British kids used to be selected for […]
Nov14th2007
The Irrelevance Of Income Inequality
Published by in Economics, General, Inequality and StdOfLiving. 0 Comments“Nevertheless, measures of inequality of incomes do indeed vastly overstate the inequality of material living standards. Nearly all Americans enjoy easy access to the likes of microwave ovens, cell phones, the Internet, and MP3 players, as well as, of course, to food, clothing, and shelter. So the differences separating the super-rich from ordinary […]
Nov13th2007
“However, if poverty is defined in the relative sense, the lowest fifth of income-earners, “poverty” will always be with us. No matter how poverty is defined, if I were an unborn spirit, condemned to a life of poverty, but God allowed me to choose which nation I wanted to be poor in, I’d choose the […]
Nov1st2007
“the impact of gender equality on family inequality could be quite large. As I’ve suggested before, when a man with high earnings potential starts to look for a wife with high earnings potential instead of a wife who can cook and clean, you are going to see fewer inter-class marriages. That raises inequality. Then the […]
Oct31st2007
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General and Inequality. 0 Comments“There is a reason many commentators on the left are allergic to evidence that economic well-being has improved up and down the income ladder: Americans are largely indifferent to the relative size of their income as long as it gets bigger absolutely. Absolute gains, from bottom to top, really take the wind out of populist […]
