Talk:Income inequality in the United States

Nonconstructive? no source?

I put the link source in there, so no clue why it was deleted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Income_inequality_in_the_United_States&oldid=prev&diff=936531901

CBO reported that for the 1979-2007 period, after-tax income (adjusted for inflation) of households in the top 1 percent of earners grew by 275%, compared to 65% for the next 19%, just under 40% for the next 60% and 18% for the bottom fifth.The share of after-tax income received by the top 1% more than doubled from about 8% in 1979 to over 17% in 2007. The share received by the other 19 percent of households in the highest quintile edged up from 35% to 36%. The major cause was an increase in investment income. Capital gains accounted for 80% of the increase in market income for the households in the top 20% (2000–2007). Over the 1991–2000 period capital gains accounted for 45% of market income for the top 20%.

References

Deferred investment

@MrOllie: What's your problem with Kausik, B. N. (February 19, 2022). "Income Inequality, Cause and Cure". arXiv:2201.10726 [econ, q-fin].?

It seems like a reasonable scholarly discussion of an alternative and worth mentioning. Accordingly, I'm reverting your deletion of the comment that cites this source. DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:28, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

My problem is mostly that the IP editor (and their predecessor account which I won't out here) has an obvious COI and has been adding self citations around Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 02:06, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. That's a reasonable reason for deleting it.

I know that "archiv.org" is not refereed, but that's not a reason for deleting it. From my perspective, almost any work that honestly cites its sources (like this one seems to do) is more valuable than most newspaper articles, which don't.

However, if I remember correctly, authors who think their work should be cited in a certain place are asked to pose the question on the associated Talk page rather than just make the change. An exception is when an acknowledged expert is asked to contribute to an article. That exception does not seem to apply in this case. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of World Inequality Database (WID)

@Avatar317:

Net personal wealth in the U.S. since 1962

The average personal wealth of people in the top 1% is more than a thousand times that of people in bottom 50%.

The logarithmic scale shows how wealth has increased for all percentile groups, though moreso for wealthier people.

— I've read your edit comment characterizing the World Inequality Database as an "advocacy organization" while removing graphics based on data from this WID web page. However, from reading WID's self-description and Wikipedia's own WID article, the WID doesn't seem to be an advocacy organization. It seems to be a bona fide data gathering organization that is considered reliable:

For example, I note that charts on pages 13, 14, and 16 of the Congressional Research Reports' 2021 publication on Income Distribution in fact rely on WID data. Though page 3 characterizes WID data as "unofficial estimates", certainly the government's own data must be "estimates", also.

— I favor the WID database in this instance because it provides specific categorized data from 1962 through 2021, whereas most other charts encountered in this area of Wikipedia don't go back nearly as far or aren't as current.

Can you please reconsider, based on the foregoing? Thanks. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Are you referring only to a comment to explain an edit?

Also, I'm confused by the sentence, "Developing country comparative data is available from databases such as the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) or the OECD Income Distribution database (OECD IDD), or, when including developing countries, from the World Bank's Povcalnet database, UN-WIDER's World Income Inequality Database, or the Standardized World Income Inequality Database.". This sentence suggests to me that there are two separate organizations with "World Inequality Database", but that looks to me to be incorrect. I found Wikipedia articles on the following:

• The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• World Inequality Database (WID)

The Nolan and Valenzuela article cited is behind a paywall, and I cannot tell from the abstract that's available for free if that article refers to both of these organizations or only one or neither.

I'm changing the wording here to match the names of these two organizations and include links to the Wikipedia articles on them, while deleting the word "Standardized". If you think what I'm doing here is wrong, please fix it while explaining your fix.

I know nothing about any incident involving "removing graphics based on data", but we need to be careful about copyrights: Someone might try to plant copyrighted material in Wikipedia article with the intention of trying to sue Wikipedia for copyright infringement. I do not see a copyright statement at wid.world. That seems to me to be a problem. I think if someone created graphs from data obtained from wid.world, they own the copyright, because you cannot copyright facts, only expression. I have created numerous graphs from sources that look similar to me to wid.world, then posted them to Wikimedia Commons under CD BY-SA and used them in Wikipedia articles.

Comments? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 11:58, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

References

@DavidMCEddy: I created the two charts in question from downloaded data, so I agree with your reasoning, and there is no copyright issue involved in my charts. This issue raised by User:Avatar317 is whether WID is reliable, which it seems to be. —RCraig09 (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09: Are those figures in Wikimedia Commons? If yes, can you put the link here? If no, what do you think about putting them in Wikimedia Commons? DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy: I've inserted the two charts above. They are in Commons. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09: What can you say about how the WID compares with the WIID?

If they are substantively different, then it's worth discussing the differences.

If they are not substantively different -- or if you don't know how they compare -- I suggest you restore the figures deleted by user:Avatar317 and say, "See talk" in the rationale. Then the onus is on user:Avatar317.

It is my considered opinion that Thomas Piketty is the world's leading expert on inequality. If someone disagrees, I want to see their evidence. I have intermittently followed the research on this topic for years. His research is not perfect, but I have yet to see anything better. I have not yet compared WID with WIID, but I plan to do so, though I'm not actively working on that right now.

Anyway, it is not uncommon among dishonest politicians and media to label honest research as advocacy. I want to see serious documentation to support any such claims. So far I have not seen such. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:11, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm frankly not following the difference between WID and WIID, but in any event, I want to give user:Avatar317 a day or two to respond, before I replace the WID-based charts. —RCraig09 (talk) 17:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@RCraig09: I agree: It seems polite and respectful to give user:Avatar317 a couple of days to respond to this discussion.

I just noticed that the Wikipedia article on "the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)" says, 'Since 2009, under director Finn Tarp, UNU-WIDER has concentrated widely on the “triple crisis” of food, climate change and finance.' My superficial and tentative inference from that is that UN-WIDER may have decided that the work of Piketty's WID is so good, the UN-WIDER would likely make better use of their resources focusing on other things since 2009. That may not be the case; I don't want to take the time now to look into that. I will be interested to hear what others, e.g., user:Avatar317, might say about this. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

As far as I understand it, the general bar for Reliablilty is WP:USEBYOTHERS, and the Congressional Research Service's use of WID data does bolster WID's reliability; but I'd like to also see other people trusting their data before we use it here.

Main reason here is that the founders: Pikkety, Saez, etc, but primarily Pikkety, have strayed from purely research to now doing advocacy against what they see as too great levels of economic inequality, and openly recommending that governments take steps to reduce it, like for example advocating for wealth taxes. (See Pikkety's books for this.) This type of advocacy leads people to overestimate/overstate the size of the "problem" they are "reporting/researching" so that others will be more sympathetic to their cause, (or presenting one-sided data) rather than objectively reporting on a situation. ---Avatar317^(talk) 21:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Sources relying on, or favorably citing, WID—on Google search limited to site:*.gov alone:

• National Center for Biotechnology Information book chapter
• National Center for Biotechnology Information article
• Congressional Budget Office
• U.S. Treasury
• Bureau of Economic Analysis "Led by the creation of the World Inequality Database and PSZ, new efforts around the world have started to develop internationally consistent distributional measures..."
• U.S. Federal Reserve
• Congressional Research Service
• UNICEF (on Senate's website)

The WID is relied upon by numerous official agencies. This U.S. Senate transcript of co-director Gabriel Zucman supports how government respects the WID to the point where the Senate allows Zucman to testify before the Joint Economic Committee. (Zucman explains, "One of our goals is to contribute to the creation of comprehensive, standardized, and internationally comparable inequality statistics that capture all forms of income contributing to GDP.") It's not "advocacy" when the data in fact supports the obvious proposition that wealth is increasingly concentrated. You User:Avatar317 haven't provided any evidence showing how the co-directors' supposed "advocacy" (testifying before a Senate committee?) affects the reliability of the data that inspired the supposed "advocacy" in the first place. Without concrete evidence, the "advocacy" characterization smacks of a conspiracy theory.
Please reconsider your stance. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:23, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with citing WID as a source. Their reports have also been featured in mainstream media including The Guardian, which I used as a citation on the Economic inequality article.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

The fact that highly respected government agencies are relying on WID data is good evidence that others don't see that data as biased, so I now agree that it is acceptable to use it. Thanks for discussing!

What I meant as advocacy is his books: "It’s useful as an opportunity for readers to see Piketty bring his larger argument about the origins of inequality and his program for fighting it into high relief." (NYT book review) ---Avatar317^(talk) 21:54, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Since I left a note at Talk:World Inequality Database suggesting additional opinions, I'll wait a while longer before re-inserting the charts. Otherwise, it sounds like consensus that WID is reliable. Thanks to all for a rational conversation! —RCraig09 (talk) 00:50, 16 September 2023 (UTC)