Income disparity “Numbers Games”
Thomas Sowell lays out the reality behind the recent media hype over “income disparity.”
It is easier and cheaper to collect statistics about income brackets than it is to follow actual flesh and blood people as they move massively from one income bracket to another over the years. […]
The Internal Revenue Service can follow individual people over the years because they can identify individuals from their Social Security numbers. During recent years, when “the top one percent” as an income category has been getting a growing share of the nation’s income, IRS data show that actual flesh and blood people who were in the top one percent in 1996 had their incomes go down — repeat, DOWN — by a whopping 26 percent by 2005.
How can both sets of statistics be true at the same time? Because most people who are in the top one percent in a given year do not stay in that bracket over the years.
If we are being serious — as distinguished from being political — then our concern should be with what is happening to actual flesh and blood human beings, not what is happening to abstract income brackets.
But if we did that, we’d have to have honest dialog about class mobility and the rewards of hard work, patience, and fiscal responsibility. Can’t have that, now can we?