Cafe Hayek - Latest Comments in The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

John — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 06:21:03 -0000

If you worry that only 50% of the population earns more than the median, you are going to be worried for a long long time.

Precisely the point: A full employment scheme for pundits...

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

Dom — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:58:03 -0000

In fairness, Zandi is not calling attention to the fact that half are above the median, half below. He means that some people have little job security and a great deal of debt, and the dividing line happens to be at the median.

It is possible to have more equitable job security and comfort on the two sides of the median.

I assume he knows what a median is.

Dom

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

ptm — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 13:54:04 -0000

That quote seems awkward but hardly silly - he's suggesting that we're seeing greater income inequality which (rhetorically and relatively) leads to a bimodal wealth distribution. The idea that doctorsm, stockbrokers, and eeeevil CEO's are doing great and burger-flippers are doing worse and worse. It's not a priori absurd, especially when the real median income has been decreasing lately.

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

The Remittance Man — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 02:55:36 -0000

Well, lets just say that for the majority of South Africans (or Africans for that matter) 25% of the median income quoted here ($75,000) would be unparalleled wealth.

Just goes to show how everything's relative.

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

Chris O'Leary — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 16:34:52 -0000

Why is it that, despite all of the money we have spent over the years on education, half of our students are still below average?

;-)

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

anti-lib — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:34:59 -0000

Don't worry....our congresspeople are doing everything they can in that particular vein!

Can't have all that "success" running around, can we? Who would the Government "help"?

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

loikll — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:20:45 -0000

So many retorts, so little time. I won't bother with the low-hanging fruit here, but I will say: inasmuch as it *does* suck to be poorer than average, gosh, it's almost like there's some unseen force encouraging people to develop desirable skills and do something more productive with their time ... I demand legislation to stamp that out!

Re: The Lake Wobegon Fallacy

Ivan Kirigin — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 08:26:55 -0000

Reminds me of definitions of poverty as the lowest 15%.

Heh. How rich does a society have to before no one is in the bottom 15%?

You could define it as those households earning below 15% of the median, but that is a measure of equality, not wealth. The lower the median, the fewer people earn a small percentage of it. Perhaps a survey of a place like N. Korea would be helpful, where I’m sure there are so many destitute people that almost no one earns below 15% the median.

What I wish we'd see more often is actually a much simpler idea: visualize inflation-adjusted distribution of income over time. Y-axis: # households, X-axis: binned income (e.g. $20-25K/yr).

It would be a big bell-curve, moving swiftly to the right over the course of the 20th century.