Inequality

Archive for Inequality

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Measuring Wealth Inequality

If the labor theory of value were correct, this would be the best episode yet of the Bob Murphy Show. My guest is Columbia prof. Wojciech Kopczuk, who is one of the world experts on the inequality literature. But I take a good 25 minutes before the interview, in order to prep the listener on […]

Phil Magness on the Tom Woods Show Discussing Our Piketty Paper

Tom does a good job of pulling out the news you can use. Here are the show notes for this episode, and here is the link to get the paper. The neat thing about this episode is even I learned something: At the end Tom asks Phil how he got interested in this. Phil answers […]

My Response to Piketty’s Response to My Paper With Magness

At Mises CA. An excerpt: OK that is pretty astounding. I encourage readers who haven’t done so, to click on our paper and just read the short sections on the Hoover/FDR tax rates and the minimum wage discussion. If those were “typos,” then when Bill Clinton said he didn’t have sexual relations with Monica Lewinski, it […]

Accounting for Capital and Income

In my latest EconLib article, I first walk through the basics of income and capital accounting. (Even if you think this is standard stuff, you might want to skim it because there are some subtleties.) Then I give three examples of how people often get mixed up about what the empirical evidence means. In particular, […]

Potpourri

==> My latest Mises CA blog post goes back to the issue of “productivity” versus labor compensation. ==> Cory Massimino also opposes the shooting of cops in pizza places. ==> Rognlie has the longest “Note” you’ve ever seen, dissecting Piketty’s argument in terms of estimates of elasticity from the literature. ==> This Noah Smith post […]

No, We’re Not Inventing 1973 as the Starting Point for “Income Inequality” Stats

Judging from the comments in a previous post, you’d think that Dave Howden made up the idea that income inequality starting rising in 1973. No, that’s the low point, using the Piketty-Saez figures. Howden didn’t pick that number, progressives typically do when quoting figures. Just from a quick one that I googled: As Isabel Sawhill […]

David Howden on Inequality

David Howden has a Mises CA post talking about the usual stats on income inequality. They typically start in 1973. (In a later post I’ll explain why they choose that date; it’s to goose the numbers.) Here’s Howden: What happened in the early 1970s to explain the divergence? Maybe it was the end of the […]

Using More Government Intervention to Undo Effects of Previous Round

In their conversation regarding income inequality, investing, Austrian economics, and other sundry topics, former business partners Nassim Taleb and Mark Spitznagel had this good exchange: Nassim Taleb: Mark, your book [The Dao of Capital–RPM] is the only place that understands crashes as natural equalizers. In the context of today’s raging debates on inequality, do you […]