"People who would portray the two claims as contradictory are much more interested in convincing you that there's no inequality problem than they are in finding out what's happening with inequality..."
Matthew Yglesias surfs over to Alan Reynolds at the Cato Institute's website:
Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: To get a good look at the slipperiness we're dealing with here, check out the Cato Editor's blurb (emphasis added):
There are frequent complaints that U.S. income inequality has increased in recent decades. Estimates of rising inequality that are widely cited in the media are often based on federal income tax return data. Those data appear to show that the share of U.S. income going to the top 1 percent has increased substantially since the 1970s. A new study by Cato scholar Alan Reynolds shows that these claims are wrong in both their premises and their conclusions. In "Has U.S. Income Inequality Really Increased?" Reynolds concludes, "There is no clear evidence of a significant and sustained increase in the inequality of U.S. incomes, wages, consumption, or wealth since the late 1980s."
Even if you believe that there's no "clear" evidence of a "significant and sustained" increase in inequality since the late 1980s this, rather clearly, wouldn't rebut the assertion that "the share of U.S. income going to the top 1 percent has increased substantially since the 1970s." People who would portray the two claims as contradictory are much more interested in convincing you that there's no inequality problem than they are in finding out what's happening with inequality.
I don't think that "slipperiness" adequately characterizes what we're dealing with here.
And, of course, there is lots of clear evidence of a significant and sustained increase in inequality since the late 1980s. I would love to believe that U.S. income inequality took an upward leap in the 1970s and 1980s and then settled down again. I can't.
