How do you reconcile...?

Seriously?

You're comparing an article written on a glorified blog to one published by the New York Times??

You got a problem with blogs? Because Simon is faculty at MIT; he also is invited to comment on policy.
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=198&co_list=F

Yes, I do.

I don't care who's writing it, it's not objective journalism like the Times.

I think this is where we start all laughing out loud, holding our bellies. No offense to the Times, but since when do they have the lock on objectivity? Do they or do they not get routinely raked over the coals for their real estate section, pretty much every weekend? Where's the objectivity there?

There's a difference between a NEWS article and a COMMENTARY, even within the same newspaper.

It's frightening that so many people no longer understand the difference.

Right. Well, dear, you've pretty much blown your credibility there.

Anyone else interested in taking this up? Because I have far better things to do than stay up late arguing with a complete ninny. G'night.

I reconcile it because the underlying premise of the times piece is fundamentally flawed. If EVERYONE lost money in the economy, then of course the rich lost money too. What counts is the relative amounts. Lets say a "poor person" earned 15,000 a year and gad a net worth of $500 and a rich person earned $10,000,000 a year and had a net worth of $40,000,000. Then the economy heads south and the rich person makes $5,000,000 a year and has a net worth of $30,000,000 while the poor person earns $10,000 a year and has a net worth of -2,000. Do you think this represents a fundamental change of rich to poor? I certainly don't.

I remember several years back a reporter who i had a lot of respect for pulled a real bonehead move in a story about the rich 9or was it about happiness?). his "proof" was a study that showed that a full 37% of rich people were below average in happiness, thus proving that rich people are no happier than not rich people. WRONG!!!!!!!!! If 37% of rich people were below average in happiness, then 63% were equal to or above average in happiness: yup, in other words it proved the OPPOSITE of what he was reporting: that rich people were in fact happier on average than poor people.

I see the same type of thing here: yes, we had some economic meltdown. The fact that it was felt by the rich in and of itself represents no fundamental shift. look at the actual conclusion to the article:

" Yet there is also a reason to think that the incomes of the wealthy could potentially have a bigger impact on others than in the past: as a share of the economy, they are vastly larger than they once were.

In 2007, the top one ten-thousandth of households took home 6 percent of the nation’s income, up from 0.9 percent in 1977. It was the highest such level since at least 1913, the first year for which the I.R.S. has data.

The top 1 percent of earners took home 23.5 percent of income, up from 9 percent three decades earlier. "

We've long been headed toward being a third world country in that regard & I don't see how this recent ecomonic debacle will change it. The Obama Administration is attempting to rectify the situation but they're being viciously attacked by the right for just that reason.

I stopped reading this thread at ..."it's not objective journalism like the Times."

hey matt-stick to the cable bills. and reread some more of your books. idiot.

matt, that was some really dumb commentary.

the rich don't spend, comparatively. they use their excess money to make more money. which can, depending on the circumstances, stimulate growth. but doesn't when the money is used to build factories in China.

the less-than-rich spend to the extent they can, or are aided and abetted by credit. that would be less and less these days.

banana republic, evnyc. that's where we're headed.

adding to the irony:

at the bottom of Mr. Master's blog appears:

"This post originally appeared on the NYT’s Economix blog, and it is used here with permission. If you wish to reproduce the entire post, please contact the New York Times. The usual fair use rules apply to short quotations."

matt, how about an academic article?

evnyc, you'll find this interesting.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/9904056/saez-UStopincomes-2007

Also, the blog article refers to a tendency of the last 30 years, probably undisputed, that the rich were getting richer while the rest were getting screwed, but it's probably also true that the crisis of the last 2 years has hit the ultra-rich disproportionately because of their ties to the banking industry. But you're still talking only about a handful of people. Still, income inequality is way worse now than in the 70's. Reagan's work.

"It is not objective journalism like the Times"!!!! LMAO - ROTFL. The Times which had a reporter fabricate stories? Or the leftist piece of crap that is spewed on its pages daily. Ugh! The irony...

If anyone can find a distinction between news and commentary in the NYT, I would like to see it. The OpEd section starts on the front page, and moves on.

This piece is a funny justaposition to the discussion earlier this week about what it means to be middle class in NYC. And, I would like to know where the professor gets his data showing increasing poverty in america and "worsening health conditions," whatever that means.

Without some common definition of "rich," this comparison is useless. The Simon article attempts to make a point about the "haves" and the "have nots," while the NYT is talking about estreme ends of the wealth scale. And, Simon's suggestion that "rich' people (whomever they are) don't mind economic cycles is mind-bogglingly stupid. Economic cycls often last a lifetime, and can irreversibly bankrupt once "rich" people.