25
Feb
2016
Murphy Twin Spin (Kinda Sorta)
==> Here’s my recent IER post on the Fed and oil prices. And here’s a comparable one from David Beckworth.
==> I’m a scholar contributing to the marketplace of ideas. First Phil Magness and I get published, and now we get cited in another economist’s article! Quick somebody get me a pipe and a smoking jacket.
The other interesting feature of the Richard Sutch article –
He dissected the Piketty U.S. wealth distribution in figure 10.5 – the (in)famous Frankenstein Graph that we picked apart. He too found that it was difficult to replicate on with the data given and rife with manipulation that accentuated his results:
“Piketty’s manipulation and smoothing of the underlying data was designed to dramatize long-run trends without bogging his narrative down with the short-run details of economic history. Piketty referred to the trends in inequality smoothed over the last two centuries to support a dynamic model of wealth accumulation and inheritance that he then extrapolated to the future to warn that “the concentration of [wealth] will attain extremely high levels.” This article is limited to examining the underlying data and to criticizing the methodology Piketty used to produce estimates of the long-run trends. As far as the American data on wealth is concerned, I found much to criticize. A quick summary of my findings is provided by the abstract. Whether the problems discovered will require Piketty to revise his analysis of the dynamics of wealth accumulation and intergenerational transmission, only he can say.”
Concentration of wealth = Those guys stole our wealth into creation.
Bob, can we make a bet on what the stock market and/or oil prices are going to do the second half of the year?
that oil analysis is uite in market monetarist fashion 🙂
i wonder if you would write something like that before you meet sumner 🙂