Three Points
by David Schmidtz
The Conversation
March 22nd, 2006
Three points. Just three, because insofar as it's a debate, the negative is supposed to respond to the affirmative, and the responsibility of the affirmative, accordingly, is not to say too much. (I sometimes say too much even for academic purposes, not only for purposes of public debate.)
1. Moving up the ladder in absolute terms is not mere cold comfort. It is the kind of moving up that matters, even if we don't pass the Joneses along the way. (I have written extensively on income mobility.)
2. As I've said, I get that there are people in this country who are poorer than 20th percentile citizens of Norway and Switzerland. Are they from Norway and Switzerland? No. Where are they from? Are they poorer than neighbors who remained in their countries of origin? Is there any population of Americans that is poorer than their ancestors were? Is there any population of Americans that is poorer than they were before emigrating to America? Or poorer than their former neighbors are today? Countries that don't allow immigration aren't constantly replenishing the population of people who are starting with nothing. People who come here with nothing are going to be increasingly far behind the rest of a population that has been building up wealth for generations. Countries that radically restrict immigration don't have people that poor, but it doesn't give them the moral high ground. (Countries that never imported human beings in chains, by contrast, do hold the moral high ground. I think this sort of fact—whether a country effectively repudiates human bondage—matters in a way that economic equality doesn't. It amazes me to think that in some eyes this would define me as someone who doesn't care about equality.)
3. I have reason to believe that there has not been a decline in real income since the 1970s. Studies showing that average wages fell by, say, nine percent between 1975 and 1997 are based upon a discredited way of correcting for inflation (and also ignore a burgeoning of fringe benefits). When we use currently accepted ways of correcting for inflation, the corrected numbers show average wages rising thirty-five percent since 1975. In December of 1996, a panel of five economists, commissioned by the Senate Finance Committee and chaired by Michael Boskin, concluded that the consumer price index overstates inflation by about 1.1 percent per year (as little as 0.8 percent or as much as 1.6 percent). If Boskin’s figure of 1.1 percent is correct, then instead of the stagnation recorded in official statistics, a lower inflation measure would mean that real median family income grew from 1973 to 1995 by 36 percent. [See Boskin, Michael, Ellen Dulberger, Robert Gordon, Zvi Griliches, and Dale Jorgensen. 1996. “Toward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living: Final Report to Senate Finance Committee,” currently available at www.socialsecurity.gov. See also Norris, Floyd. 1996. “So Maybe It Wasn’t the Economy,” New York Times (December 1).]
