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The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessm

The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. Here he presents a few studies that go against general economic consensus popularized mainly by Piketty in "Capital in the 21st century" and through papers/writing by Krugman, Saez, Zucman, Stiglitz, etc. that most of the economic gains in the past 100 years have gone to a concentrated few owners of capital. Roberts highlights a few studies that use panel data (same people tracked over time) instead of cross-section data (snapshots of different populations at different times) and show that 70% of children from low-income households generally earn more than their parents, and usually end up with about 2x more income (only 33% of high-income children earn more than their parents.) Another study looks at people age 35-40 in 1987 and then how they did when they were 55-60 in 2007. Median income was down for the top 5%, middle quintile was up 27%, and bottom quintile median income rose 100%. Basically - absolute mobility (how much people gain over time) is still decently healthy today in percentage terms in the US, but relative mobility (how easy it is to move between classes) is widening and the wealthy in 1980 still have a much higher income on average than the poor in 1980. Also, the poor in 2014 were actually worse off than the poor in the 1980s which Roberts attributes to poor people reporting less income in 2014, that there could be more poor immigrants in 2014 with less education, and that 2014 could be an unrepresentative year. Personally I don't buy Robert's "glass half full" argument, but I appreciate him bringing some panel data into the discussion to temper the prevailing economic narrative. I think if he looked at studies that include wealth and net worth panel data, not just income, that account for assets such as homes, the results would be much much different.

JAlexoid 8y ago
He's a fellow at Stanford School of Economics and he's a typical academic... Which is to say, that his articles must be taken independently. His opinions on other issues are not discussed, so it's easy to build a strawman about his other opinions. That also means that we must point out the fact that this article is only a small subset of data, that really tells us only what the data was collected on.
- mediaobs1 8y ago
  Roberts is a fellow at the rightwing Hoover Institution, which like most rightwing think tanks gets significant funding from rightwing billionaires who have a particular ideological agenda. Of all the academic types at rightwing think tanks like AEI, Heritage, Cato, Russ Roberts is probably the best. I like him. But this issue - wealth inequality- is core to rightwing interests.
tanderson92 8y ago
> Here he presents a few studies that go against general economic consensus popularized mainly by Piketty in "Capital in the 21st century" and through papers/writing by Krugman, Saez, Zucman, Stiglitz, etc. that most of the economic gains in the past 100 years have gone to a concentrated few owners of capital. > Basically - absolute mobility (how much people gain over time) is still decently healthy today in percentage terms in the US, but relative mobility (how easy it is to move between classes) is widening and the wealthy in 1980 still have a much higher income on average than the poor in 1980. These are not at all in conflict. As you say, the studies he discusses are not related to, much less undermine, any of the arguments that Krugman/Saez/Zucman/Piketty are making. I don't see any reason why individual characteristics like absolute mobility should be used to measure the health or inequality of an overall economy. Income mobility is a different thing from concentration of wealth or inequality.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  Agreed. I think he was trying to write a controversial piece to break free from the status quo thinking of "inequality is growing" but totally missed the forest for the trees in his conclusion. Makes me wonder if he had an alternative agenda with this piece and question his economic analysis in general.
  - roymurdock 8y ago
    Also I think Roberts is on here under the username russroberts613, and responded to the comments in this thread 2 hours ago, so upvote him to get his opinion/rebuttal seen and seek him out if you have any questions
TimJYoung 8y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is he trying to say that if a lower-to-middle-class person now makes $10K more than his parents (who made $40k combined), that somehow that is better than the wealthy person that now makes $10K less than his parents (who made $1.2m combined) ? I think this deserves a "man on the street" survey to see which income most people would prefer...
- spectrum1234 8y ago
  Of course this is better. The poor are improving the most in absolute terms in your example.
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    Better is a very subjective term here, which was my point. The lower-to-middle class person is still subject to all kinds of economic issues that are of zero concern to the wealthy person.
joe_the_user 8y ago
The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. The thing one needs to understand about economics is that it's field where analysis and advocacy have never been separate. It's not just Marx and von Mises that were strong advocates of policy. Smith, Ricardo and Keynes had the favored policy and thus favored world view. So being a respected economic commentator by itself isn't by itself a testament to objectivity. The article is worth a glance but others here have to pointed to the serious methodological problems - following individuals falls victim to regression to mean, some poor can become wealth and some wealthy can become poor says nothing about the average gulf between the groups. Even more, if we have a society where the whole population is divided between wealthy and poor randomly, with each having a 1% of becoming wealthy and otherwise barely surviving, we might have a fair society but it would also be an extremely dysfunctional society (but know such fairness really could exist, so we're just left with the income inequality).
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Further, One might say there's a complex debate that goes between economists, where the arguments are framed as "how do we measure this policy's impact on equity, well-being and etc" but where each debater has their own emphasis and measure of these things. One pole might be a grim state socialism while another pole might be a Nietzsche/Harry-Lime view that "the goal of a society is to produce five great men and if the majority must be destitute for this, so be it". It's easy to say "we should be in the middle" but the reality talk of middles essentially involves where each debater wants to claim the "Overton Window" is located and so incrementally move it.
kimmeld 8y ago
Russ' political views have been drifting steadily right over time so the data that he cherry picks regarding inflation, total household income, income inequality, is not surprising. I used to listen to his podcast pretty frequently to get a different perspective on econ but now it's pretty painful due to his increasing inability to see outside his own bubble.
- Jgrubb 8y ago
  That's funny, I unsubscribed just this week for the same reason.
- cmurphycode 8y ago
  I agree, but I don't have an alternative with the range/quality of guests he interviews. Any suggestions?
- sarcher 8y ago
  There was a guest this summer who noted that unmarried and areligious people are "emasculated". The guest also received zero push-back while implying that immigrants were purposefully being directed by the government to avoid assimilation and that we should return to harsh methods for dealing with immigrants. Russ just let the whole statement slide by without comment. Have conversations with difficult people, sure, but have a conversation, don't just let stuff like that slide by! Not sure how long I'll be subscribed if those attitudes keep receiving clear air.
wehi 8y ago
> The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. I am starting to wonder if there is such a thing. I can respect an academic who writes scientific papers for their peers to review. I can respect an academic who has opinions of the state of the world. I can't respect someone who mixes the two. If you write something for an audience that can't asses the validity of your statement you are deliberately deceiving people. I can't respect that. There is a reason why Piketty's book is 700 pages and certainly enough, both good and bad, have been said about it already. He isn't adding anything apparently noteworthy here. How does a normal person begin to explore all the "facts and figures" presented in the article. and how do you figure out if it is even valid to the overall discussion? The answer is that you don't, and the author knows this. It is dishonest. When Neil Degrasse Tyson says that we should explore space his argument isn't a bunch of statistics on how it would benefit humanity 23.95%, even though I am sure he could come up with some. That is because he has made a career out of teaching people about space and hoping they will share his excitement, rather than being a politician telling people what to think. So no, I really don't understand why I should listen to Russ Roberts.

JAlexoid 8y ago

He's a fellow at Stanford School of Economics and he's a typical academic... Which is to say, that his articles must be taken independently. His opinions on other issues are not discussed, so it's easy to build a strawman about his other opinions. That also means that we must point out the fact that this article is only a small subset of data, that really tells us only what the data was collected on.

mediaobs1 8y ago
Roberts is a fellow at the rightwing Hoover Institution, which like most rightwing think tanks gets significant funding from rightwing billionaires who have a particular ideological agenda. Of all the academic types at rightwing think tanks like AEI, Heritage, Cato, Russ Roberts is probably the best. I like him. But this issue - wealth inequality- is core to rightwing interests.

tanderson92 8y ago

> Here he presents a few studies that go against general economic consensus popularized mainly by Piketty in "Capital in the 21st century" and through papers/writing by Krugman, Saez, Zucman, Stiglitz, etc. that most of the economic gains in the past 100 years have gone to a concentrated few owners of capital. > Basically - absolute mobility (how much people gain over time) is still decently healthy today in percentage terms in the US, but relative mobility (how easy it is to move between classes) is widening and the wealthy in 1980 still have a much higher income on average than the poor in 1980. These are not at all in conflict. As you say, the studies he discusses are not related to, much less undermine, any of the arguments that Krugman/Saez/Zucman/Piketty are making. I don't see any reason why individual characteristics like absolute mobility should be used to measure the health or inequality of an overall economy. Income mobility is a different thing from concentration of wealth or inequality.

roymurdock 8y ago
Agreed. I think he was trying to write a controversial piece to break free from the status quo thinking of "inequality is growing" but totally missed the forest for the trees in his conclusion. Makes me wonder if he had an alternative agenda with this piece and question his economic analysis in general.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  Also I think Roberts is on here under the username russroberts613, and responded to the comments in this thread 2 hours ago, so upvote him to get his opinion/rebuttal seen and seek him out if you have any questions

TimJYoung 8y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is he trying to say that if a lower-to-middle-class person now makes $10K more than his parents (who made $40k combined), that somehow that is better than the wealthy person that now makes $10K less than his parents (who made $1.2m combined) ? I think this deserves a "man on the street" survey to see which income most people would prefer...

spectrum1234 8y ago
Of course this is better. The poor are improving the most in absolute terms in your example.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  Better is a very subjective term here, which was my point. The lower-to-middle class person is still subject to all kinds of economic issues that are of zero concern to the wealthy person.

joe_the_user 8y ago

The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. The thing one needs to understand about economics is that it's field where analysis and advocacy have never been separate. It's not just Marx and von Mises that were strong advocates of policy. Smith, Ricardo and Keynes had the favored policy and thus favored world view. So being a respected economic commentator by itself isn't by itself a testament to objectivity. The article is worth a glance but others here have to pointed to the serious methodological problems - following individuals falls victim to regression to mean, some poor can become wealth and some wealthy can become poor says nothing about the average gulf between the groups. Even more, if we have a society where the whole population is divided between wealthy and poor randomly, with each having a 1% of becoming wealthy and otherwise barely surviving, we might have a fair society but it would also be an extremely dysfunctional society (but know such fairness really could exist, so we're just left with the income inequality).

joe_the_user 8y ago
Further, One might say there's a complex debate that goes between economists, where the arguments are framed as "how do we measure this policy's impact on equity, well-being and etc" but where each debater has their own emphasis and measure of these things. One pole might be a grim state socialism while another pole might be a Nietzsche/Harry-Lime view that "the goal of a society is to produce five great men and if the majority must be destitute for this, so be it". It's easy to say "we should be in the middle" but the reality talk of middles essentially involves where each debater wants to claim the "Overton Window" is located and so incrementally move it.

kimmeld 8y ago

Russ' political views have been drifting steadily right over time so the data that he cherry picks regarding inflation, total household income, income inequality, is not surprising. I used to listen to his podcast pretty frequently to get a different perspective on econ but now it's pretty painful due to his increasing inability to see outside his own bubble.

Jgrubb 8y ago
That's funny, I unsubscribed just this week for the same reason.
cmurphycode 8y ago
I agree, but I don't have an alternative with the range/quality of guests he interviews. Any suggestions?
sarcher 8y ago
There was a guest this summer who noted that unmarried and areligious people are "emasculated". The guest also received zero push-back while implying that immigrants were purposefully being directed by the government to avoid assimilation and that we should return to harsh methods for dealing with immigrants. Russ just let the whole statement slide by without comment. Have conversations with difficult people, sure, but have a conversation, don't just let stuff like that slide by! Not sure how long I'll be subscribed if those attitudes keep receiving clear air.

wehi 8y ago

> The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment. I am starting to wonder if there is such a thing. I can respect an academic who writes scientific papers for their peers to review. I can respect an academic who has opinions of the state of the world. I can't respect someone who mixes the two. If you write something for an audience that can't asses the validity of your statement you are deliberately deceiving people. I can't respect that. There is a reason why Piketty's book is 700 pages and certainly enough, both good and bad, have been said about it already. He isn't adding anything apparently noteworthy here. How does a normal person begin to explore all the "facts and figures" presented in the article. and how do you figure out if it is even valid to the overall discussion? The answer is that you don't, and the author knows this. It is dishonest. When Neil Degrasse Tyson says that we should explore space his argument isn't a bunch of statistics on how it would benefit humanity 23.95%, even though I am sure he could come up with some. That is because he has made a career out of teaching people about space and hoping they will share his excitement, rather than being a politician telling people what to think. So no, I really don't understand why I should listen to Russ Roberts.