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The author thinks low-income people's incomes are rising and that is false. The rest of the article is fallacious because of this.

tylerhou 9y ago
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy
- andyjohnson0 9y ago
  The "Falacy falacy" strictly applies to logical falacy. Its pretty clear that the grandparent is using "fallacious" in the informal sense of "mistaken belief".
  - tylerhou 9y ago
    Even if you (loosely) interpret the usage of "fallacious" in the parent comment as "mistaken belief", he's still claiming that the rest of the article exhibits the "mistaken belief" that rent control is bad. His argument for why the article exhibits a mistaken belief is because the article has a wrong statement near the beginning (incomes are rising for low income people). This is still an example of the fallacy fallacy. > The "Falacy falacy" strictly applies to logical falacy. Are you claiming that the parent comment is not logical or not making a logical argument? What type of other acceptable argument is there?
Finnucane 9y ago
Incomes are, on average, rising a little. Which is partly why the stock market is freaking out; Wall Street hates it when income goes up, because they view it as money coming out of their pocket. Cities like New York and Boston and SF are expensive because there's a lot of money going through them; this creates high demand and high incomes for some. But companies like Facebook and Google and Apple could certainly afford to pay everyone who works for them in any capacity enough so that no one would have to live in a car. But the investor class would have a shit if that happened.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisLomont 9y ago
Lowest incomes, even inflation adjusted, certainly have been rising. Here's historical Census Data [1], Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent. Maybe you have some large scale data you'd like to share? [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
- Retric 9y ago
  From the data you linked: lowest 5th 2001: 24,361 2016: 24,002 that's a net loss over the last 15 years. The numbers rise and fall but: 1979: 21,594 2014: 21,728 Is not what i would call meaningful progress.
  - ChrisLomont 9y ago
    Yes, if you cherry pick all time highs (2001) then you can claim they've lost since then. Picking a second case (1979) and oddly comparing it to 2014 instead of 2016 is equally misleading. Instead of cherry-picking dates to suit a narrative, looking at all data, the 2016 income was higher than any year back to 1966 except the 3 years 1999,2000,2001. So of the 50ish years in the data, 2016 ranks in the top 4, and is 96% of the all time high. The trend since the recession is increasing, and if not for the recession, would probably be at all time highs. I would not be surprised if once 2017 or 2018 numbers were in all time values will be reached. So yes, wages are increasing. One reason low end stays mostly flat is it includes all people just starting careers, who have no skills, so it's not unreasonable that the inflation adjusted value they provide is not tremendously increased. Looking at values over this time frame also needs demographics figured in for this reason, and as the workforce becomes younger, wages are expected to become lower, while each individual person at point X in a career still has higher wages. Census reports cover this. Remember avg wages are static snapshots of a moving cohort.
    - Retric 9y ago
      The problem with your argument is the last 40+ years is +/- 10% of ~22,000. Yes there are highs and lows, but that's not progress that's just how well the economy is that year. Basically take 22,000 * a function of unemployment rate and the data is flat over time. PS: Looking at the highest income for a quintile also says very little about it as everyonone is making less than that. You really want the median of the quintile or the average of everyone within that range.
pmarreck 9y ago
This comment and its replies are what happens when you refute an assertion without evidence
saosebastiao 9y ago
There are various perspectives to take on income in which two people looking at the same data can come to two different conclusions. It goes much further than Simpsons paradox. Simply choosing your windows for comparison differently can cause this: one person chooses to compare 2014 with 2016, and the other chooses to compare 2001 with 2009. One perspective that is almost universally true going back as far as we have data, is that incomes rise over the lifetime of the individual. Because the bottom 20% today are a completely different set of people as the bottom 20% of tomorrow. And because people strongly to earn more as they get older, the premises of the article hold up.
MarkMc 9y ago
> The author thinks low-income people's incomes are rising and that is false. The author doesn't specifically mention low-income people - she just says that 'incomes rise': But then incomes rise, and rents don’t. People with higher incomes have more resources to pursue access to artificially cheap real estate: friends who work for management companies, “key fees” or simply incomes that promise landlords they won’t have to worry about collecting the rent. Your observation that poor people's incomes are stagnant actually strengthens the authors point above, because a growing income gap gives rich people 'more resources to pursue access to artificially cheap real estate'. > The rest of the article is fallacious because of this. There are some points in the article that are not dependant on rising incomes. For example, Meanwhile, price ceilings reduce the supply because they decrease the incentive to build, and can make it downright imperative to remove rental housing from the market and turn it to some other use -- condos, warehouses, anything that won’t trigger the rent controls.

tylerhou 9y ago

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy

andyjohnson0 9y ago
The "Falacy falacy" strictly applies to logical falacy. Its pretty clear that the grandparent is using "fallacious" in the informal sense of "mistaken belief".
- tylerhou 9y ago
  Even if you (loosely) interpret the usage of "fallacious" in the parent comment as "mistaken belief", he's still claiming that the rest of the article exhibits the "mistaken belief" that rent control is bad. His argument for why the article exhibits a mistaken belief is because the article has a wrong statement near the beginning (incomes are rising for low income people). This is still an example of the fallacy fallacy. > The "Falacy falacy" strictly applies to logical falacy. Are you claiming that the parent comment is not logical or not making a logical argument? What type of other acceptable argument is there?

Finnucane 9y ago

Incomes are, on average, rising a little. Which is partly why the stock market is freaking out; Wall Street hates it when income goes up, because they view it as money coming out of their pocket. Cities like New York and Boston and SF are expensive because there's a lot of money going through them; this creates high demand and high incomes for some. But companies like Facebook and Google and Apple could certainly afford to pay everyone who works for them in any capacity enough so that no one would have to live in a car. But the investor class would have a shit if that happened.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ChrisLomont 9y ago

Lowest incomes, even inflation adjusted, certainly have been rising. Here's historical Census Data [1], Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent. Maybe you have some large scale data you'd like to share? [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

Retric 9y ago
From the data you linked: lowest 5th 2001: 24,361 2016: 24,002 that's a net loss over the last 15 years. The numbers rise and fall but: 1979: 21,594 2014: 21,728 Is not what i would call meaningful progress.
- ChrisLomont 9y ago
  Yes, if you cherry pick all time highs (2001) then you can claim they've lost since then. Picking a second case (1979) and oddly comparing it to 2014 instead of 2016 is equally misleading. Instead of cherry-picking dates to suit a narrative, looking at all data, the 2016 income was higher than any year back to 1966 except the 3 years 1999,2000,2001. So of the 50ish years in the data, 2016 ranks in the top 4, and is 96% of the all time high. The trend since the recession is increasing, and if not for the recession, would probably be at all time highs. I would not be surprised if once 2017 or 2018 numbers were in all time values will be reached. So yes, wages are increasing. One reason low end stays mostly flat is it includes all people just starting careers, who have no skills, so it's not unreasonable that the inflation adjusted value they provide is not tremendously increased. Looking at values over this time frame also needs demographics figured in for this reason, and as the workforce becomes younger, wages are expected to become lower, while each individual person at point X in a career still has higher wages. Census reports cover this. Remember avg wages are static snapshots of a moving cohort.
  - Retric 9y ago
    The problem with your argument is the last 40+ years is +/- 10% of ~22,000. Yes there are highs and lows, but that's not progress that's just how well the economy is that year. Basically take 22,000 * a function of unemployment rate and the data is flat over time. PS: Looking at the highest income for a quintile also says very little about it as everyonone is making less than that. You really want the median of the quintile or the average of everyone within that range.

pmarreck 9y ago

This comment and its replies are what happens when you refute an assertion without evidence

saosebastiao 9y ago

There are various perspectives to take on income in which two people looking at the same data can come to two different conclusions. It goes much further than Simpsons paradox. Simply choosing your windows for comparison differently can cause this: one person chooses to compare 2014 with 2016, and the other chooses to compare 2001 with 2009. One perspective that is almost universally true going back as far as we have data, is that incomes rise over the lifetime of the individual. Because the bottom 20% today are a completely different set of people as the bottom 20% of tomorrow. And because people strongly to earn more as they get older, the premises of the article hold up.

MarkMc 9y ago

> The author thinks low-income people's incomes are rising and that is false. The author doesn't specifically mention low-income people - she just says that 'incomes rise': But then incomes rise, and rents don’t. People with higher incomes have more resources to pursue access to artificially cheap real estate: friends who work for management companies, “key fees” or simply incomes that promise landlords they won’t have to worry about collecting the rent. Your observation that poor people's incomes are stagnant actually strengthens the authors point above, because a growing income gap gives rich people 'more resources to pursue access to artificially cheap real estate'. > The rest of the article is fallacious because of this. There are some points in the article that are not dependant on rising incomes. For example, Meanwhile, price ceilings reduce the supply because they decrease the incentive to build, and can make it downright imperative to remove rental housing from the market and turn it to some other use -- condos, warehouses, anything that won’t trigger the rent controls.