{"id":26208,"date":"2010-08-04T10:09:06","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T15:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=26208"},"modified":"2012-01-16T00:50:22","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T05:50:22","slug":"guest-post-rich-and-richer-dumb-and-dumber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/08\/04\/guest-post-rich-and-richer-dumb-and-dumber\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich and Richer, Dumb and Dumber"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ran the CBO data on income and published a report showing the huge increase in inequality since 1979, especially in recent years (the data go up to 2007 \u2013 full report here<\/a>).\u00a0 It\u2019s the people at the top \u2013 the default swappers and hedge funders \u2013 who\u2019ve been making out like bandits, while the rest of us limped slowly along.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The graph shows percent changes. How much is that in American money?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We all knew this. But I\u2019m still surprised that supposedly intelligent people can still attribute it all to individual factors. Yes, individual differences in ability account for individual differences.\u00a0 But they don\u2019t make for huge changes in the overall distribution.<\/p>\n

But here we have Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit<\/a>, one of the most widely read bloggers in the known universe (especially the conservative universe), reprinting the comment of a reader at a tax blog<\/a> that posted the data.<\/p>\n

A reason for the \u201cwealth or income gap\u201d: Smart people keep on doing things that are smart and make them money while stupid people keep on doing things that are stupid and keep them from achieving.<\/p>\n

People who get an education, stay off of drugs, apply themselves, and save and wisely invest their earnings do a lot better than people who drop out of school, become substance abusers, and buy fancy cars and houses that they can\u2019t afford, only to lose them.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have an income gap. We have a stupid gap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Glenn calls it \u201cthe comment of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1993, the average household in the top 1% was making 36 times the income of a household in the lowest fifth. In the next 14 years, those top guys worked really hard while the poor apparently sold their diplomas to buy crack and Escalades, so by 2007 the gap had doubled. The richest now made 72 times the income of the poor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The funny thing is that for a few years (1984- 1983 1993) the rich-poor gap was decreasing. It must have been all the cocaine those bond traders were doing.<\/p>\n

The commenter is right \u2013 there may be a stupid gap. But it\u2019s the gap that Durkheim suggested long ago. Some people look at \u201csocial facts\u201d \u2013 large differences between one time or place and another \u2013 and try to explain them in terms of individual facts. Other people seek an explanation in social facts \u2013 facts about the society, facts which individuals have little power to change.<\/p>\n

(HT: Mark Kleiman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ran the CBO data on income and published a report showing the huge increase in inequality since 1979, especially in recent years (the data go up to 2007 \u2013 full report here).\u00a0 It\u2019s the people at the top \u2013 the default swappers and hedge funders \u2013 who\u2019ve been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23384,36,253,2104],"class_list":["post-26208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-economics","tag-history","tag-knowledgeintelligence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26208"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38347,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26208\/revisions\/38347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}