Conservatives are trying to prove income inequality is a myth — and failing - LA Times

[Panich52]

Conservatives are trying to prove #incomeinequality is a myth — and failing -
LA Times

“(Martin) Feldstein urged his readers not to ‘lose sight of how well middle-income families have actually done over the past few decades.’ …by defining the ‘middle class’ as those earning the median income, Feldstein is putting his thumbs on the scale … what were once thought of as middle-class households have slipped well down the income ladder.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-conservatives-income-inequality-20150803-column.html#page=1

[Gothmog]

1. Income inequality is real and the GOP are wasting their time

[Igel]

2. Silly conservatives.

Silly liberals.

Both sides missed what happened from 1992 to 2007. The middle class was hollowed out--they got that. They both sides went a bit loopy. Conservatives tried to argue it wasn't really happening. Duh.

Most on the left have a different "duh" moment. There was a rather infamous NYT article from 2004 or 2005 that showed clearly what was happening. The text, though, was hopelessly biased. The # of middle class families was shrinking, and that trend has continued fairly consistently. It got that.

The article's bias was just pointing out the # of middle class families that fell below the middle-class cutoff. The horror of it all. Something must be done.

What the accompanying graph and tables showed, though, was that far more middle class families fell "up" out of the middle class. That wasn't a story, though, because nobody felt outraged or victimized by increased prosperity. There was no movement potential--"keep incomes high" resonates, but "keep incomes low" rings, well, hollow. However, that, too, is a sign of income inequality since the middle was being hollowed out and continues to be hollowed out. But still we only focus on downward migration, and delight in anecdotes that we confuse for data. But I digress.

Of course, nobody tracked individual families. In any given year some moved up into the middle, some down into the middle. It was the # in the aggregate that changed, it's just easy to think that somehow the group is steady and from year to year its the same people and families in each class. That's true, to a point. But only to a point.

The narrative, though, was fixed by then and hasn't even been tweaked slightly in a decade.

There were also reasons for the upward and downward movement that are resolutely ignored, often with no more justification than the conservatives have for their idiocy.

[HughBeaumont]

3. "Martin Feldstein" says it all.

Figured good ol' Marty, the architect of America's winner-take-everything, Republican-driven business school mentality, would have a hand in reducing this reality to a "myth".

[libodem]

4. Maybe the can send James O'Keeffe

To film a fabrication full of editing and misleading content. That is precisely how the operate.

[hifiguy]

5. Shit, there are still reichwing dingbats

and religulous shitstains who are still trying to prove Kepler, Copernicus and Einstein were wrong. With just about as much luck.

The facts are what the facts are, you fucking inbred shitheels.