Not much to work with here. It's in the Opinion pages, presumably because they don't have a section called "Evidence-based Analysis." If you already have an opinion on the subject, this article will do nothing to change it. I perked up when I saw a paragraph begin with the words "Start with the numbers." But it doesn't have any real numbers. It says: This essay at least implies a reason we should be concerned about wealth diversity, something other than envy: "the continuing shift of income away from the middle class toward a small elite." But the mechanism by which this happened (to say nothing of if) is quite vague. Something connected to "rising household debt." How are we supposed to come to any conclusions? Then, the focus shifts from alleged economic damages to Americans to harms perpetrated against the political system itself. The commendable complaints against crapitalism -- distortion of markets by politicians under the sway of business interests -- would impress me more if they were at all specific. Instead, the author just says "government should be spending more" during "an era of mass unemployment." It takes fifteen seconds to look up "unemployment rate in us" and get a pretty graph. Can you find the "mass unemployment" in this picture? source It's not hard to find an article arguing that inequality is exaggerated that at least contains a few citations.On average, Americans remain a lot poorer today than they were before the economic crisis.
I assume "average" means median, and "Americans" means "Americans who are not in the top 10%." We already saw that the level has been fairly flat since the '70s, and I gave some reasons why that may not represent a crisis.
No doubt. Unfortunately, this is the newspaper we're dealing with and thus has to conform to a standard that leaves anyone with a brain wanting. It could certainly benefit from some actual analysis. I only posted it, because it was timely with regard to another ongoing hubski conversation.Not much to work with here. It's in the Opinion pages, presumably because they don't have a section called "Evidence-based Analysis." If you already have an opinion on the subject, this article will do nothing to change it.
I just noticed that this article got ten shares with no comments, just like the one about rich people. I understand that sharing does not imply endorsement, but it implies something: "this is worth reading" perhaps. Are we all just passing these screeds around without any critical consideration? If the article were about evolution or climate change, I can't imagine it would get this much traction without any criticism. I am curious: why does this subject get a pass?
Good question. Perhaps people just don't have that much to add. Or perhaps they have a visceral attraction to the subject matter, but can't quite articulate why. We even see with economists that many who see inequality as a problem resort to moral arguments to justify their position. I do think there is a good economic argument for greater equality, but I'm no expert. To me, the main case for why inequality is bad was made by Robert Reich, where he pointed out that when too much wealth is concentrated at the top (especially when the reason it's concentrated is because of wage stagnation at the middle and bottom, as has been the case here for far too long), then the middle class has no purchasing power except by leveraging what is available (in the run up to 2008, that leverage was home equity loans and credit card debt). Nobody has cash on hand, because the cash is all parked in a very few accounts (relatively speaking). The system requires continued borrowing (by people who can't really afford it) to support its own weight and must, therefore, collapse eventually.