Econ 102, the Michigan Longitudinal Study

Everybody likes to talk about money.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368952/inequality-fallacies-thomas-sowell
Sowell points out the junk science on the assertions of income inequality:
“But there have been empirical studies, going back for decades, showing that there is no such gap when the women and men are in the same occupation, with the same skills, experience, education, hours of work, and continuous years of full-time work.
(Dunn note, men work more rewarding hours and more demanding work–apples to apples there are no inequalities.)
Income differences between the sexes reflect the fact that women and men differ in all these things — and more. Young male doctors earn much more than young female doctors. But young male doctors work over 500 hours a year more than young female doctors.
Then there is the current hysteria which claims that people in the famous “top 1 percent” have incomes that are rising sharply and absorbing a wholly disproportionate share of all the income in the country.
But check out a Treasury Department study titled “Income Mobility in the U.S. from 1996 to 2005.” It uses income-tax data, showing that people who were in the top 1 percent in 1996 had their incomes fall — repeat, fall — by 26 percent by 2005.”
(Dunn note: two things important to note here. One–The Michigan Longitudinal Study data shows that people move up and down in quintiles of income at different stages of life. For example older people may have plenty of assets and lesser income and clearly the maximum period for income in the peak years is less than in apprenticeship level activity as a young person.)
Michigan Longitudinal Data Studies are available here:
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/
Dunn note, Second point–poverty and income/benefits transfers in a welfare state like the US makes quintiles of income as reported in tax returns not even close to a measure of disposable income and quality of life. Read, for example the work of Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation on the quality of life of those ranked in poverty as compared to even middle class people in Europe.)
Moffit’s work is 20 plus years of studies of poverty in America. What he shows is that poverty, which is about 15% of the population based on a kind of arbitrary income level, is not about lifestyle or “stuff” that people have. The poor in America live better than the middle class in Europe when measured in terms of housing, appliances, and other measures of standards of living.
http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/m/robert-moffit
More coming on this Sowell series of essays on basic economics and junk science in the political sphere on economic questions.
Sowell discuses some shibboleths about rent control, gun control, and the favorite of the current leftist idiocracy–minimum wages.
I would say his comments are worth considering.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369072/facing-minimum-wage-truth-thomas-sowell