New research fr Treasury & JCT economists indicates top 1% share of pre-tax & -transfer income rose not from 9% to 20% 1979-2015, but fr 10 to 15. Add transfers: fr 9 to 13. Account for taxes: fr 8 to 10. Increase fr 1989-2015 just from 9.5 to 10.1. davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-…
Which econ journalist will write it up first?
Even if you go with pre-tax & -transfer income, the rise from 1989 to 2015 was from 11.5% to 14.9%. It was 11.3% in 1960. Thanks to @boblerman for drawing my attention to the paper.
Thing that's always bugged me abt income concentration narrative: Piketty-Saez data was cited to explain how rise in inequality had created all these problems & confirmed what The People suspected. But it was always possible that The People were wrong or never gave it thought.
And so many social commentators, journalists, activists, politicians, scholars have opined about the cancer of rising inequality (to use their alarmism), when there were always reasons to think the rise had been grossly overstated.
That is to say, they may have *made up* a cancerous social crisis that didn't exist because they weren't skeptical about liberal-friendly claims. They didn't take @AlanReynoldsEcn concerns seriously over a decade ago. Heck, I've been plugging his argument for a decade now.
Many of his arguments have proven correct. This study isn't the last word, but I hope that Piketty-Saez boosters are already questioning whether they have approached the evidence in the correct way all along.
