The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Inequality on Feb 4th, 2011
It’s probably time that I systematically collected and presented what you need to know in order to be an informed person on the topic of income inequality, its measurement, its importance, and whether any policy can do anything about it. At the end of it all, I will try to organize it into a summary [...]
Posted in Inequality, Methodology on Jan 31st, 2011
The question of the “right amount” of inequality came up in a discussion with a student a few days ago. The student agreed that perfect income equality would be undesirable because theory and experience both show that most of us would end up following the Soviet mantra, “We pretend to work and they pretend to [...]
Posted in Inequality on Oct 4th, 2010
Under which of the following two conditions would income (re)distribution be more justified? Before I present the alternatives, just accept for the time being that we will have the state taking from the better off (at least monetarily better off) and giving it to the less well off (financially) and assume away public choice issues. [...]
Posted in Inequality, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 2nd, 2010
Reflect for a moment on the original state of man as God (or who or whatever you do or do not believe in) instituted it. Men are born with vastly varying degrees of attractiveness, strength, energy, intelligence, propensity for disease, and so on. Furthermore, man’s physical location across the globe has placed some at great [...]
Posted in Inequality, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 6th, 2009
You’ll often hear railing that CEO pay is nuts and immorally high. After all, who needs $11 million per year? And how can it be necessary or fair to have CEOs running around making 400 times the typical worker pay, while 25 years ago that number was roughly 30 times larger. Fine, have those opinions, [...]
Posted in Inequality on Nov 1st, 2009
This article discusses a new phenomenon: for the first time ever, the number of “poor” in suburban America exceeds the number of “poor” in urban cities. Here is an excerpt: There are certain comparative advantages to being poor in a place other than inner-city Cleveland or Detroit. Whatever else he may fear, Price doesn’t have [...]
Posted in Inequality on Aug 31st, 2009
“Excessive” inequality seems not to have been brought by Columbus, nor by colonial powers for several centuries, but largely after independence in the 19th century: Compared with the rest of the world, inequality was not high in pre-conquest 1491, nor was it high in the post-conquest decades following 1492. Indeed, it was not even high [...]
Posted in Inequality on Aug 5th, 2009
Economists and other social scientists have long been interested in measures of income inequality. Most such measures are based on individual or household income at a moment in time. However, as a measure of the distribution of welfare, the typical income inequality measure leaves out an important dimension: the length of time over which an [...]
Posted in Inequality on Jul 21st, 2009
Some folks argue that “we” are too obsessed with income, and that more income, at some point, does not mean more happiness. Their obvious conclusion is that higher taxes on “the rich” are not only OK, but justifiable on some cosmic level. But others have pointed out, rightly, that there is much more to inequality [...]
Posted in Education, Inequality on Jul 8th, 2009
I was asked to write a review of Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz’s, The Race Between Education and Technology.Here is a long-winded, unedited version of it. Among the stuff that did not make it is that I don’t view it as important to have the world’s most educated public, nor do I view it [...]
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