Is Income Inequality Increasing?

nytimes.com:

Most economists seem to agree that income inequality has increased significantly in the United States over the last 30 years. But they don't agree on the exact shape of the change. Because the fact is, we don't have the data we need to measure income distribution as accurately as we should.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[plooger]

03:40 PM on 04/19/2010

From the article... >> Other interesting technical problems afflict analysis of income inequality, including the possibility that rich and poor families consume such different baskets of goods and services that different price indices should be used to adjust their income for inflation. For instance, the cost of goods purchased at Wal-Mart has gone up more slowly than the cost of vacations in Tuscany.

I can't tell if this last line was a joke. What does how one spends one's income have to do with income inequality, outside of those factors directly linked to the ability to earn said income? (i.e. the cost of living in Manhattan is much higher than Podunk, Illinois, so it's reasonable to make adjustments based on cost of living in order to make a broader income comparison -- but I don't see vacations in Tuscany as a staple of the middle income family)

[plooger]

03:09 PM on 04/19/2010

The problem with changing how inequality is measured is the inability to go back in time and make equivalent measurements, so we lose the ability to track progress relative to past policies.

[plooger]

03:06 PM on 04/19/2010

HuffPost, read your own articles...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/19/the-scariest-charts-of-th_n_540456.html#s81531

>> "Income Inequality In The United States Is At An All-Time High"

A study by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, who created this chart, illustrates that by 2007 (the most recent year for which data is available), the share of total income going to the top ten percent of the population soared to highs not seen since the Great Depression -- and then exceeded them.

[Furby2]

01:41 PM on 04/19/2010

Is Income Inequality Increasing? Gee, I don't know. Aren't you supposed to be telling us if it is or not instead of asking us? But we've got a strong suspicion about your question. We think it is. Does that count?

[Giverny]

02:39 PM on 04/19/2010

Exactly. They complain about union wages when the wages are frozen for several years. Teachers are making less than they should teaching our children( i.e. legacy) and yet that is alright when capital gains are more often than not windfall profits but we should understand that, right? Disparity has been legislated into our policies and we are expected to be kept in the dark. What are they afraid of? Another Robespierre?

[Fabini]

01:40 PM on 04/19/2010

There is an assumption in this article that is becoming quaint. It can be inferred after reading the third paragraph from the end:

"The bureau [of Economic Analysis ] promises a variety of new measures to help policy makers better understand the ups and downs of the business cycle, as well as the distribution of income."

The assumption is this: policy makers (aka Congress) care. A corollary is this: policy makers act in the best interest of the entire population. In an era of the "hell no" party, it's quaint.

[Mondayboy]

01:10 PM on 04/19/2010

Statistics can be used as a deceptive tool. Take the income of the one of the top hedge fund managers, which $3 billion per year and take a teacher who earns $40,000 per year. Between the two of them their average annual salary is $1,500,020,000 which is absolute nonsense. Taking average salaries nationally is idiotic.

[guveqzero]

11:20 AM on 04/19/2010

There are no statistics because there is no incentive to have accurate information, it can only hurt politicians and enrage the voters. Why have such potentially dangerous information available to the public? However, the economists lack of attention to detail is also part of the problem here.