The LIE du jure: The mythical "rich" get richer and the "Poor" stay poor lie spewed by class warriors!
VRWC32
us all a constant, comical parade of Leftist demagoguery! It is
simply hilarious.
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Everybody expects politicians to lie [only because they do],
especially during an election year. You can bet the rent money on it.
Among the many lies we can expect to hear this election year, none
will be bigger or more often repeated, in the [looting Leftist] media
as well as by politicians, than the lie that there is a widening
income gap between the rich and the poor.
Why is that a lie, when there are so many statistics that seem to
substantiate it?
Let's start at square one and take it a step at a time.
First of all, there is a fundamental difference between statistical
categories and flesh-and-blood human beings.
When there is a growing disparity between one statistical category and
another statistical category over time, that does not mean that there
is a corresponding growing disparity between flesh-and-blood human
beings over time, since human beings move from one statistical
category to another.
The statistical categories in this case are income brackets. There is
no question that incomes in the top income brackets have risen both
absolutely and relative to the bottom income brackets.
The joker is that millions of people move from one income bracket to
another.
The even bigger joker is that taxpayers whose incomes were in the
bottom 20 percent in 1996 had a 91 percent increase in incomes by
2005.
Meanwhile, taxpayers in the top one-hundredth of one percent -- "the
rich" or "superrich" if you believe politicians and the media -- had
their incomes drop by 26 percent over those very same years.
Obviously, when millions of people's incomes nearly double in a
decade, many of them move up out of the bottom income bracket.
Similarly, when other people who were at the top see their income drop
by about one-fourth, many of them drop out of that bracket.
When we talk about "the rich" and "the poor" we mean rich and poor
human beings, not rich and poor statistical brackets. Yet politicians
and the media treat people and statistical categories as if they were
the same thing.
Part of the reason is that data on statistical brackets are more
numerous and easier to find, whether from Census Bureau statistics or
from a variety of other sources.
Data based on following actual flesh-and-blood individuals over time
are, however, also available. The statistics quoted above are from the
Treasury Department, which has people's income tax returns, so it is
no problem for them to follow the same people over the years.
You can check out the numbers for yourself in a November 13, 2007
report from the Treasury Department titled "Income Mobility in the
United States from 1996 to 2005." You can find a summary of the same
data in a Wall Street Journal editorial that same day.
These are not the only data that tell a diametrically opposite story
from the usual political and media story that the rich are getting
richer and the poor are getting poorer.
A previous Treasury Department study showed similar patterns in
individual income changes between 1979 and 1988.
Moreover, a study conducted at the University of Michigan, following
the same individuals over an even longer span of time, likewise found
most people moving from income bracket to income bracket over time --
especially among those who began in the bottom 20 percent.
The University of Michigan Panel Survey on Income Dynamics showed
that, among people who were in the bottom 20 percent income bracket in
1975, only 5 percent were still in that category in 1991. Nearly six
times as many of them were now in the top 20 percent in 1991.
There was a summary of the University of Michigan data in the 1995
annual report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which also issued
an excerpt titled "By Our Own Bootstraps."
Among the intelligentsia, it is fashionable to sneer at income
mobility as a "Horatio Alger myth" -- and, as someone once said, you
cannot refute a sneer. But, among people who have not yet abandoned
facts for rhetoric, it is worth stopping to consider whether they are
being played for fools by politicians and much of the media.
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Debate honestly or shut the hell up!
Posted (and possibly paraphrased) with permission. Following the
example set by other posters in this and other groups, the creator
of this post has withheld the author/source of the article above
because the author/source is not relevant to the merit of the
article's content -- except to whining liberals and big State
collaborators who have no intellectual, emotional or moral
capacity to HONESTLY refute, support or expand on the points made in
the article! Since they "feeeel" that the article ideas are "wrong",
but cannot logically refute them, their typical response is to attack
the author, source or poster. Withholding attribution denies these
pathetic, intellectually dysfunctional critics the opportunity to
attack anything BUT the content or the poster. Attacking ANYTHING BUT
the article content is evidence that you have already lost the debate.
Now watch this folks. Some of the pedantic, anal, nitpicking liberals
here who care more for red herring allegations of plagiarism than the
actual content of the debate will now expend some of the precious,
irreplaceable (thank God) time of their pathetic lives in identifying
the author of this piece (it's not the poster) and then whine and
squeal about anything BUT the content. It's really comical to watch.
(SourceCode: 00106)
Paul Thomas, CPA
"VRWC32" <pri...@nospam.com> wrote
> Posted (and possibly paraphrased) with permission.
http://eurekareporter.com/article/080122-dangerous-demagoguery-part-ii
word for word
© 2008 The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.
Rich and poor: people are people, not statistics
By Thomas Sowell
Published: Jan 22 2008, 4:13 PM
Category: Opinion
Topic: Forum
At least give the guy the credit.