Category: Weatlh and Income Distribution
-
Is Income Inequality Really the Problem? It Depends on What You Call Income
Are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? Stories about inequality typically talk about how the rich, especially the top 1%, are seeing their incomes grow rapidly while people at the bottom are seeing their incomes stagnate and drop. A gap is widening between the top and the bottom. Is that true? The…
-
World Bank: ‘The world has become more equal’
AEI – James Pethokoukis: World Bank: 'The world has become more equal' Lots of attention being given to a new World Bank study suggesting China may overtake the United States this year as the world's largest economy, adjusted for living costs. But this other World Bank finding, noted by the Financial Times, is also interesting:…
-
Economics Links
1. Huffington Post: Financially Speaking — Are We an Illiterate Nation? … Champlain College's Center for Financial Literacy released its '2013 National Report Card,' which quantifies what states are doing to promote financial literacy in the classroom. Only seven of 50 states surveyed came away from the study with an "A" rating. That's right, a…
-
Stop Obsessing Over Exorbitant CEO Pay
Slate: Stop Obsessing Over Exorbitant CEO Pay It’s grotesque, but income inequality isn’t as harmful as we think. … … But as New York Times economics writer Eduardo Porter noted recently, claiming that wealth inequality is unambiguously harmful is more about ideology than evidence. He cites the struggles of Harvard scholar Christopher Jencks, a leading…
-
The Myth of the Monolithic 1%
The top 1% versus the 99% is again emerging as a popular topic. I wonder how many people genuinely reflect on who makes up the 1%. I believe many people see the 1% as a highly cohesive static population segment. It isn't. Social scientists use two different types of analysis when analyzing data about populations.…
-
The World’s Bottom 10%: 7.5% Live in North America and None Live in China … And Other True But Worthless Facts
Back in January, Oxfam published a statistic saying that eighty-five people have more wealth than the bottom half of the world population. It has become a widely circulated stat in the debate about inequality. (Forbes recently countered that the number is actually sixty-seven people.) But what do these numbers mean? I know full well that…
-
Your New Born Is Wealthier than 60 Million Americans
Robert Reich's increasingly well-traveled observation is, "The 400 richest Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us." But think about what that means. What is "wealth?" I routinely sense that most people incorrectly think this means how much money you have, or much stuff you own, including money (i.e., assets.) No.…
-
How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong
Atlantic: How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong In fact, the gain in wealth share is all about the top 0.1 percent of the country. While nine-tenths of the top percentile hasn't seen much change at all since 1960, the 0.01 percent has essentially quadrupled its share of the country's wealth…