Comments on: Presidents and Income Inequality

By: #Die #Geburt #eines #Bewusstseins von Stephan Groschwitz [via heise.de] | aufwachenundmitmachen

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:29:15 +0000

[...] anderen Wissens. Über Jahrzehnte hinweg hat davon die amerikanische Rechte profitiert – politisch wie finanziell. Amerikas “Linke” jedoch gibt es als organisierte Kraft nicht. Traditionell [...]

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:17:38 +0000

great research bro�

By: mrpinto

mrpinto — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:54:37 +0000

@A. Zarkov, if supply of labor increases while demand for it remains the same, wage rates should fall. That said, what evidence do we have that demand has remained the same? The new workers are demanding goods and services too, no? Can we really say that adding new workers to an economy drives wage rates down in the long run? If so, perhaps we might institute a One Child rule as China has done… What’s the difference between a new college grad, an H1-B, or an immigrant – it’s just another unit of labor supply… In my view, there’s probably more to wage economics than a single principle of “keep the population down to concentrate the wealth.”

By: Northerner

Northerner — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:27:44 +0000

Well, Andrew Gelman’s caution that “sample size issues are a concern” has to be the understatement of the year. And you’re kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel by noting that Kevin Drum and Will Wilkinson (and several other bloggers who have no statistical expertise whatsoever) accept the results.

By: A. Zarkov

A. Zarkov — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:15:25 +0000

How come no discussion of the wage impact of immigration, off-shoring, and the H1-B non-immigrant visa program? Has the law of supply and demand been repealed for labor? Please explain how the millions of low skilled migrants that have flooded the US labor market over the last 20 years have not increased income inequality? Explain how the H1-B program has not lowered wages for American programmers, engineers, scientists and other skilled workers. Surely this has had a greater impact that which party has the presidency. The last time I looked, the president did not sign my paycheck.

By: Steve Roth

Steve Roth — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:37:56 +0000

Great paper, Lane. Nice to see Bartel’s excellent work further unpacked.

The short story that I get from it: It’s all about Clinton. (The Carter years seem to have little impact on the analysis, and Republican trends were largely similar in the pre- and post-’79 periods.)

Clinton didn’t manage to continue the equality/prosperity trends of earlier Democrats. One could be charitable and say that he had Gingrich and Co. (and the still quite popular Reagan ideology) to deal with, or one could say that he (and Rubin) had drunk of the Reaganomics kool-aid (question: Ken Kesey, or Jim Jones?), and that he barely gagged while swallowing Reagan’s seed.

Probably both are true.

By: marcel

marcel — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:41:58 +0000

A nattering (as in nattering nabobs..) point: On p. 13 of your paper, you write:

And it is heavily influenced by a single year: 2001. After
rising continuously between 1993 and 2000, the top 1%/bottom 60% ratio fell
sharply in 2001. This was due to the stock market plunge. Since that plunge was
in large part a product of the collapse of the dotcom-driven bubble, it is not clear
whether we should attribute it to anything the Clinton administration did or did
not do. If we ignore 2001, the average ten-year change under Democratic administrations
balloons from +7.0 to +13.9.

Except for 19.5 days, Bush was president in 2001. So, it seems that this loss should have been attributed to the GOP not the Dems, in any event.

If you want to ignore this point as an outlier, then (a) the Dems have a much higher 10 year change, but the GOP must have a much lower 10 year change, no? Including this point puts the beginning of GWB’s administration at a very low value that allows for major postivie growth in the 1/60 ratio, which almost automaticallly means that the ratio will grow substantially during his reign. Ignoring it means that the calculation should start in 2002, and the positive growth of the ratio is bound to be lower.

By: Income inequality and different ideas over time about the ability of presidents to intervene successfully in the economy | Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:43:16 +0000

[...] Kenworthy writes (link from here and here): The notion that political parties are a key determinant of income inequality has been [...]