Stupidest Men Alive (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

"Stupidest Man Alive" is no longer sufficient. We must now refer to the financial writers at National Review as the Stupidest Men AliveTM. There are just too many of them.

I really do not understand why the culture, society, and foreign-policy people at NR--who do, sometimes, have things to say that they want people who are not on the Bush payroll to listen to--haven't risen up in revolt, for appearing cheek-by-jowl to the work of the Stupidest Men Alive destroys their credibility as well.

Mark Thoma watches Thomas Nugent self-destruct in an implosion of stupidity:

Economist's View: Thomas Nugent... questions the integrity of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.... "(Is there a potential bias in these studies?)".... If he has evidence [which he does not: Saez and Piketty have been very careful, and are very good; I'd take even odds that at least one of them will do something to win the Nobel Prize someday], put it on the table....

[T]he... attack... on Krugman's presentation of inequality statistics... without basis. For example, [Nugent] whines:

[W]hat is the basis for his growing inequality assumption? Is he referring to levels of income? Wealth? After-tax income?

Well, if he'd check Krugman's Money Talks page for a section called "On Tracking Inequality" he might be enlightened. It's all there, including links to the original data. A simple email to Krugman would have straightened it out as well, but of course, that would undermine the attack squad effort....

Mark Thoma does not do Nugent justice. Here's a sample of the loony:

Thomas E. Nugent on Paul Krugmand and Inequality on NRO Financial: Some of Krugman’s inequality cohorts prefer to use median or average family income in presenting their arguments. But what further undermines any of these positions is that we have added millions of people to the list of employed, most of whom are at the lower end of the income scale. Being a math major, such additions would tell me that the traditional “average” income level would fall. Seven million new workers are better off than if they didn’t have a job. How do the redistributionists argue against that economic gain?...

Well, the "redistributionists" point out that the median household income has fallen. Increases in employment have come about overwhelmingly because the population has increased, not because a given American has a greater chance of finding a job. 64.4% of working-age adults had jobs in 2000. 63.1% of working-age adults had jobs today. That employment as a share of adults is only 98/100 of what it was in 2000 has played a big part in keeping the lid on most people's wages and salaries--supply and demand, you know--which has played a big part in widening inequality.

Here's another sample:

The Treasury reports that the majority of American families with incomes below $40,000 pay no income taxes at all today, while many in this group receive welfare subsidies. According to Krugman, “Now the rich are getting richer, but most working Americans are losing ground.” In a booming economy when global wealth is growing, I find it difficult to believe that “most” working Americans are losing ground, especially when many of them pay low or no taxes and employment is at record levels.

Yes, in a booming economy it would be difficult to believe that most working Americans are losing ground. So the fact that the best data we have makes it look like we are is something we should take seriously.

There is one interesting point. Thomaa refers to it here:

[Nugent's] overall point is to deny that there is widening inequality.... He actually claims inequality has [recently] narrowed:

During the first four years of the George W. Bush presidency, the income share of the top 1 percent fell slightly to 19 percent from 20.8 percent...

Here, however, Nugent is, I think, simply picking up a line from Greg Mankiw--who is, I think, simply wrong here. Greg wrote:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: New Data on Income Inequality: In today's NY Times, Paul Krugman calls attention to the update of the Piketty-Saez data on income inequality, although Paul describes the data differently than I would.Here is what I see: After rising substantially from 1986 to 2000, income inequality is essentially the same in 2004 (the most recent year of data) as it was in 2000...

Take a look:

What I think: I can't be as optimistic as Greg is that the trend of rising inequality has come to an end. Where Greg sees an essentially flat trend from 2000-2004, I see numbers for 1998-2000 that were temporarily boosted by the dot-com bubble, and then a decrease in inequality from 2000-2002 as the bubble ebbed--a decrease that was then reversed in 2003-2004 as inequality rose again, and the gap between median salaries and productive suggests that inequality has continued rising since.

I wish that income inequality has peaked. I think my wishes are vain.