Rick Lowe

I subscribe to Forbes magazine and also get their daily e-mail notification. Today the article with the title of this blog piqued my interest as income inequality is a political football in the US, and sometimes it's offered up here at home.

However, Professor Robert Gordon has released a paper titled Has the Rise in American Inequality Been Exaggerated (pdf) that might raise some hackles according to Brian S. Westbury and Robert Stein.

Truth and demagoguery in the income-inequality debate.

When it comes to income inequality, conventional wisdom says that it's been getting worse for a long time. Productivity is going up, but middle-class incomes are stagnating. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You've heard it over and over again. Many free-market economists have argued against the conventional wisdom, only to be dismissed as out of touch. But an incredible new paper from Northwestern Professor Robert Gordon, a pillar of the "mainstream" academic establishment, says maybe they are right and have been for a long time. [More…]

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