September 24, 2009
The Rich get Richer
And the poor get richer, too! Don't tell anybody, it ruins a great meme.
James Pethokoukis links to new research that shows Income inequality in America is overstated. Robert Gordon:
The rise in American inequality has been exaggerated both in magnitude and timing. Commentators lament the large gap between the growth rates of real median household income and of private sector productivity. This paper shows that a conceptually consistent measure of this growth gap over 1979 to 2007 is only one-tenth of the conventional measure
Alan Reynolds's superb
"Income and Wealth" does a great job counteracting this as well
Economics and Markets
Posted by John Kranz at September 24, 2009 11:01 AM
Exhibit B on the the same meme: it has been told to me (I've never really taken the time to check it out myself) that if you were to compile a list of the 500 richest people in any given nation, and compare that to the same list from a generation before, you'd see the same names on both lists - either the same person or a descendant. In most countries, the wealthy class stays fixed. No so in America, which has far more turnover on that list than other nations. Average people penetrate wealth and worldly success far more frequently here than elsewhere, be it England, India, or Thailand.
That would seem to be the result of individual economic freedoms and our being a more classless society (trust fund babies notwithstanding). Not only to the rich get richer and the poor get richer here, but each person's place in that hierarchy is far less fixed. Thoughts?
Exhibit B on the the same meme: it has been told to me (I've never really taken the time to check it out myself) that if you were to compile a list of the 500 richest people in any given nation, and compare that to the same list from a generation before, you'd see the same names on both lists - either the same person or a descendant. In most countries, the wealthy class stays fixed. No so in America, which has far more turnover on that list than other nations. Average people penetrate wealth and worldly success far more frequently here than elsewhere, be it England, India, or Thailand.
That would seem to be the result of individual economic freedoms and our being a more classless society (trust fund babies notwithstanding). Not only to the rich get richer and the poor get richer here, but each person's place in that hierarchy is far less fixed. Thoughts?
Posted by: Keith at September 24, 2009 12:08 PMUnderscores and exclamation marks, Keith! In a free society people move among the quintiles -- another reason the income inequality attacks are so specious.
Posted by: jk at September 24, 2009 1:10 PM | What do you think? [2]