Comments on: Misery Loves Inequality

By: Maryland Conservatarian

Maryland Conservatarian — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:18:22 +0000

“Of course, many of those at the high end of the scale have brought us extraordinary innovations in the financial markets,…”

Are you referring to George Soros’ famous multi-billion short of the British pound in the early 90’s?

By: KipEsquire

KipEsquire — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 05:23:07 +0000

Will Wilkinson, an expert on debunking so-called "happiness research," responds to Frank here.

By: eisegetes

eisegetes — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:49:10 +0000

But see.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Daniel: absolutely right.

Kip: I’d love to see your sources. Maybe you’re thinking about the Treasury study debunked here:

http://www.urban.org/publications/406722.html

“The impressive degree of mobility found in the Treasury study has been attributed largely to two factors. First, the restriction of the sample to only those households that paid taxes in all ten years introduced a bias toward the economically successful, as only half of all households met this criteria. Second, the study compared the 1988 incomes of those in the sample to the incomes of the population as a whole in 1988, thereby capturing the natural tendency of earnings to increase as individuals grow older, and identifying this as economic mobility. That is, the average income of the sample would be expected to rise each year simply as a result of the individuals in the sample growing older and gaining more work experience. The average income of the population as a whole, however, would be expected to remain constant. To count this increase in income as a component of “mobility” is to use a significantly different definition of mobility than was employed in . . . other studies . . . .”

But seriously, you think someone advocating for reduced income inequality is advocating a caste system? That’s a genuinely bizarre assertion.

By: KipEsquire

KipEsquire — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:59:28 +0000

The fact that, in a free and capitalist society, these percentiles are not a static caste system (e.g., yesterday’s “Top 1%” are not tomorrow’s “Top 1%” and yesterday’s “Bottom 20%” are not tomorrow’s “Bottom 20%”) makes these data worthless at best and maliciously deceitful at worst.

Or are you instead advocating that we indeed move to static caste system?

By: Daniel S. Goldberg

Daniel S. Goldberg — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:45:30 +0000

To beat my drum: how about the growing evidence base for the proposition that income inequality is robustly correlated with population health? And that some causal mechanisms, both on the social level — i.e., violence — and the molecular level — neuroendocrine changes — are promising.

If we want to make our society healthier, we should redress inequality.