http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/02/11/mark-a-thoma/yes-virginia-income-inequality-is-still-rising/ Big Ideas for a Better World Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:01:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/02/11/mark-a-thoma/yes-virginia-income-inequality-is-still-rising/comment-page-1/#comment-367617 Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » Why Change the Subject? Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:18:01 +0000 http://www.cato-unbound.org/?p=407#comment-367617 [...] When Thoma comments on my Wall Street Journal piece with David Henderson, he changes the subject from corporate profits to interest income. He imagines we wrote that “since tax-deferred earnings are not reported, the distribution of interest income from these assets is imputed from reported interest on other assets and this skews the measured distribution of income toward inequality.” Amazingly, the words “corporate profits” appear nowhere in his convoluted analysis of something we never wrote, even though the misallocation of 59.4% of corporate profits to the top 1% was the focal point of our graph and article. The CBO added 39% of corporate profits to top 1% incomes in 1989 and 59% in 2004, thus fabricating a wholly artificial increase in the top 1 percent’s share. [...] [...] When Thoma comments on my Wall Street Journal piece with David Henderson, he changes the subject from corporate profits to interest income. He imagines we wrote that “since tax-deferred earnings are not reported, the distribution of interest income from these assets is imputed from reported interest on other assets and this skews the measured distribution of income toward inequality.” Amazingly, the words “corporate profits” appear nowhere in his convoluted analysis of something we never wrote, even though the misallocation of 59.4% of corporate profits to the top 1% was the focal point of our graph and article. The CBO added 39% of corporate profits to top 1% incomes in 1989 and 59% in 2004, thus fabricating a wholly artificial increase in the top 1 percent’s share. [...]

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