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Originally posted by Spanky
No but you dismissed anything put out by the WSJ Op ed page or the CATO intitue and defended the NYT, to back up your argument.
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I dismissed Reynolds. I agree that worthwhile thoughts sometimes are expressed by the WSJ op ed page (though rarely) or by Cato. But I don't think I defended the NYT, notwithstanding Sebby's efforts to bait me into siding with Krugman.
This started when I praised President Bush's speech on the subject. Why do you disagree with the President on this subject? Don't you think Treasury has some decent economists on its payroll?
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Sebby said that this issue is being way oversimplified by most people. The terms are vague and therefore the statistics can be manipulated to support any vague assertion. Until you specifically define what you mean by income inequality, and what strata of society you are identifying, your statements are meaningless. Terms like rich, working class, the poor are all way to vague to have any meaning. Same goes for terms like "disproportionate rises in income, income gap, rise in income inequality etc.
In order to have a real discussion, you need to talk about quintiles of the entire population and how much their income is actually rising or falling. And then look at the hard numbers.
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This is the Reynolds game. Try to muddy things and make it all complex, and then argue that there are two sides. Why do you hate our President?
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His point was proven by all the articles he posted and you posted.
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I don't recall posting any articles, which shows just how much complexity on this debate you can handle.
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Any article that doesn’t specifically describe how its numbers were reached, how they define a strata of society, how they are defining change (or widening gap) and display the actual numbers they were looking at, is about as useful as brass knuckles in a gun fight.
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Insofar as you are describing Reynolds' WSJ op-ed piece, I agree completely.
When you have something to contribute to this conversation other than epistemological masturbation, go for it.
