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Media Myth Debunked: Income Inequality Is Actually Plummeting; A conversation for U.S. citizens only.
Topic Started: Feb 21 2012, 08:56 AM (465 Views)
Jim Miller
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Media Myth Debunked: Income Inequality Is Actually Plummeting


Since the first Occupy Wall Street protest, you haven't been able to swing a dead cat in this country without hitting an Obama-loving media member carping and whining about income inequality.

Yet according to this chart created by the nation's largest federation of trade unions the AFL-CIO, the difference between average CEO and average worker pay has been plummeting since the year 2000:

Posted Image

As you can see, the real explosion in income inequality happened in the '90s as stock prices went through the rough during the tech bubble.

Yet from 2000 through 2009, this disparity actually declined by 50 percent.

To assist in furthering the point, NewsBusters member Gary Hall has added to the AFL-CIO's chart:

Posted Image

In reality, the real creator of income inequality in recent decades was - wait for it!- Bill "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton.

You remember the media complaining in 2000 when the average CEO was making 525 times the average worker?

No, I don't either.

But the best is still to come because the president that radically narrowed this disparity in pay was - wait for it again! - George W. Bush!

Despite this narrowing, Bush is depicted as a pawn of the wealthy and enemy of the common man.

With this data from the AFL-CIO, maybe he should be the Occupy movement and its media minions' hero rather than their goat.

Additionally, since this income disparity exploded under Clinton, maybe his fans in the press should reconsider their love for the economy of the '90s.

Unless, of course, income inequality really doesn't matter if it can't advance their liberal agenda.
Edited by Jim Miller, Feb 21 2012, 08:58 AM.
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Chris
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Interesting. My pointing to economic mobility was to counter only a liberal myth.
Edited by Chris, Feb 21 2012, 09:12 AM.
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ImaHeadaU
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The Gini coefficient for household income as measured by the ACS rather than the CPS for 2009 was 0.469, not statistically different from the CPS measure. The Gini measures from the CPS and the ACS are compared in Table 1.8 Note that there is no reason to expect the statistics to agree exactly - the
surveys are very different.9

Table 2 shows the P90/10 and P95/20 income inequality measures for the ACS. These ratios show basically the same time series story as did the Gini coefficient - an increase in income inequality from 2006 to 2009.10
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
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Chris
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ImaHeadaU
Feb 21 2012, 09:36 AM
Quote:
 
The Gini coefficient for household income as measured by the ACS rather than the CPS for 2009 was 0.469, not statistically different from the CPS measure. The Gini measures from the CPS and the ACS are compared in Table 1.8 Note that there is no reason to expect the statistics to agree exactly - the
surveys are very different.9

Table 2 shows the P90/10 and P95/20 income inequality measures for the ACS. These ratios show basically the same time series story as did the Gini coefficient - an increase in income inequality from 2006 to 2009.10
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
That's interesting but the following, also from your link, indicates the fuller context and import of the study, which doesn't seem related to the topic.

"While this paper estimated a regression model describing the relationship between the Gini coefficient of income inequality and tract characteristics, it is not a causal model....to the extent that individuals and households prefer one type of community to another, they can undertake to find an area with the ranges of household income that they would choose to increase their neighborhood satisfaction."
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tomdrobin
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How stupid do you think we are. CEO pay isn't the only factor in income inequality. So, CEO pay has decreased since 2000. You can't use that to come to the conclusions you are. Unless your stupid, trying to decieve or feeding a loonie his daily does of bias confirmation. :tongue:
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Banandangees
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It appears that the AFL-CIO study is measuring CEO pay to worker income, while the Gini study appears to be measuring "Household" income.

The AFL-CIO study is measuring "worker" to "worker" inequality. The Gini study isn't in that not all households in America have a member who is working.

Measuring two different population groups aren't they?
Edited by Banandangees, Feb 21 2012, 07:04 PM.
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Jim Miller
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tomdrobin
Feb 21 2012, 01:29 PM
How stupid do you think we are.
You are laying yourself wide open with that one, Tom. Someone may just tell you.
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Chris
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tomdrobin
Feb 21 2012, 01:29 PM
How stupid do you think we are. CEO pay isn't the only factor in income inequality. So, CEO pay has decreased since 2000. You can't use that to come to the conclusions you are. Unless your stupid, trying to decieve or feeding a loonie his daily does of bias confirmation. :tongue:
But CEO pay has been the talking point.
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tomdrobin
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CEO pay is only a small part of the income inequality issue.
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ImaHeadaU
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Chris
Feb 21 2012, 09:43 AM
ImaHeadaU
Feb 21 2012, 09:36 AM
Quote:
 
The Gini coefficient for household income as measured by the ACS rather than the CPS for 2009 was 0.469, not statistically different from the CPS measure. The Gini measures from the CPS and the ACS are compared in Table 1.8 Note that there is no reason to expect the statistics to agree exactly - the
surveys are very different.9

Table 2 shows the P90/10 and P95/20 income inequality measures for the ACS. These ratios show basically the same time series story as did the Gini coefficient - an increase in income inequality from 2006 to 2009.10
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
That's interesting but the following, also from your link, indicates the fuller context and import of the study, which doesn't seem related to the topic.

"While this paper estimated a regression model describing the relationship between the Gini coefficient of income inequality and tract characteristics, it is not a causal model....to the extent that individuals and households prefer one type of community to another, they can undertake to find an area with the ranges of household income that they would choose to increase their neighborhood satisfaction."
While the paper also delves into the U.S. Government's numbers on income inequality on the state and further down to the community level, the section that I quoted dealt with the national statistics.

I thought it might be helpful to use the government's numbers rather than those from from the small sample quoted in the opening post.
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