Sidebar: Gini is Out of The Bottle

My conservative counterpart was told he was welcome to “knock himself out” again when some of his comments didn’t come through to this blog (according to him) responding to my post critical of his post on a PolitiFact (PF) ruling on Alan Grayson, concerning the Gini co-efficient of wealth. He indeed self-immolated with a bunch of non-sensical points: his usual sentence-by-sentence parse in order to falsely complicate and conceal the over-riding issue of Alan Grayson’s remarks about wealth inequality as evaluated by the Truth-o-Meter.

Saying “You've been proved wrong on point after point and you simply dismiss it without addressing the arguments” is arrogantly absurd on its face…if it’s proof, it’s proof by verbosity. Just because HE says I’m proven wrong doesn't mean that I am, that's just what he thinks. Talk about  self-stultification (with admirable aplomb)! But OK, I’ll give him a break, he does offer one somewhat worthwhile point:

“As I pointed out, Grayson has no real argument unless wealth inequality has demonstrably ill effects.”

Either Bryan is out of touch with reality or just choosing to ignore the obvious for the sake of argument. I think I’d choose the latter because of his frequent intransigence when debating people (as I’ve provided many examples of in previous posts).

The recorded history of our planet is replete with the demonstrably ill effects of wealth inequality, as well as the apathy of the “1%”: from the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned to that of Marie Antoinette’s telling those without bread to eat cake, which was said to have sparked a revolution. Only this time through the skillful use of propaganda, some of those in the 99% ( I am assuming) such as Bryan are defending those telling them to eat cake.

Bryan referred me to such propaganda with a PBS video of an interview with Richard Epstein, a “libertarian” law professor, who claims there’s a “good side” to wealth inequality. If you read Epstein’s bio, by the way, nowhere does it say he teaches or has a background in economics. His background is law. Now, at the undergraduate and graduate level, he might have taken some economics courses (and note, this was during the 1960’s before the advent of Reaganomics/supply side economic theories), but that limit to his qualifications makes me somewhat wary of his economic opinions. Other than that, Epstein is also an “Adjunct Scholar” at the conservative Cato Institute, and his writings have been warmly regarded at the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute’s website.

But even with this background, I’m certainly not in a position to provide the correct explanation of the other side, why economic inequality “isn’t good for America.” So for this, there’s a video as well, an interview with economist Richard Wolff, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. You can watch it below. His three pronged counter-argument to that of Epstein:

Lil White Lies: I Dream of Gini

Lawyers’ Rules of Thumb(i.e., how my conservative counterpart works his blog):
If you can’t use the law (i.e., argue fallacies), use the facts
If you don’t have facts, use the law (i.e., argue fallacies)
If you have neither law (fallacies) nor the facts, pound on the table and create a distraction.

Here we have another sublimely bloviating multiple-infected specimen of misrepresenting the source along with the underlying argument of a PolitiFact (PF) ruling. My conservative counterpart takes aim at a statement made by ex-Florida-congressman Alan Grayson on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that there are “are only five countries in the entire planet that are more unequal than the United States in the distribution of our wealth.”

The first part of Bryan White’s argument is that PolitiFact’s Lou Jacobson (who else!) incorrectly attributed where Grayson said he got his information: a link provided in Wikipedia to a “peer-reviewed” paper published in The Economic Journal in 2010. He explains:

If the PolitiFact team had paid closer attention, they would have noticed that the numbers on which Grayson relies were not published in any peer-reviewed journal. The numbers Grayson used ultimately came from an appendix (Excel file) to a working paper that preceded the version published in The Economic Journal.

PolitiFact reports falsely in claiming that PolitiFact sourced its numbers to the linked "a peer-reviewed paper." Sift through the linked work from now until doomsday and you won't find "Namibia" mentioned at all nor any comprehensive list of Gini coefficients (identified by PolitiFact as the primary statistic used to identify inequality) for all the nations of the earth.

But if one reads the paper (paid closer attention!), one would find 25 countries listed,with the identical Gini Coefficients from the “unpublished” Appendix VI, in Table 7 on page 246 . The writers describe how they chose these 25 countries: “Note. Countries are listed according to the number of members of the global top wealth decile.” In other words, the writers made this the criteria for selecting countries from Appendix VI. In fact, Table 7 has the U.S. as Numero Uno in wealth disparity, as the four countries which exceed it are not there, although one of them, Switzerland, is mentioned on the previous page: “…Switzerland, whose distribution is based on hard data with good detail in the upper tail, has a Gini coefficient of 0.803 (Davies et al., 2009, Appendix VI) The US and Switzerland have Gini coefficients close to the global wealth Gini of 0.802.” And right there is the cross reference to “Davies et al., Appendix VI” which is cited frequently throughout the paper. James Davies is the first “academic” listed as the writer of the paper.

So, if Appendix VI wasn't published, what becomes of this? Does that make it incorrect?

If one looks at the working papers cited/linked in a bottom reference at Wikipedia, one can see it reads like the paper submitted to The Economic Journal. In other words, it’s virtually certain that Appendix VI served as the data source for Table 7. Actually, it WAS published, although not in The Economic Journal: it was at the NBER, National Bureau of Economic Research. I suppose only the reference was required for the table instead of appending it to what was published in The Economic Journal; but for all intents and purposes it was the foundation of the paper’s Table 7 and was the sole reliance for the Gini data presented . You can say it was partially published, but it can’t be said, as Bryan’s trying to claim, that it wasn’t published at all.

Politi-Express Barely True Review

Or: Shouldn't Barely True be Mostly False?

At PolitiFact (PF), a ruling of Barely True means that “The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” I do not like the words “Barely True” because the word True is somewhat misleading as it conveys the “True” or truth of the ruling more strongly than the False, even though it's more "False" than "True".  To see how stressing the "False" is more in line with the ruling, here's a short review of four of PolitiFact's Barely True rulings done during the first quarter of 2011.

Promises, promises. Michele Bachmann, Republican, in her response to Obama’s state of the union address, said “The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8 percent."

OMG!  Farley passed!

Some of this was repeated verbatim for another PolitiFact fact-check in February by PF Virginia on George Allen, former Virginia Senator.

My conservative counterpart, who broke from his usual harsh patterns and gave PF writer Robert Farley and Editor Martha Hamilton a grade of C on the Bachmann ruling, insisted that it was hypocritical that this was not included on the Obameter as a “promise”.

I think I agree with the sense of the final finding. Bachmann's statement had a basis in fact but tended to mislead without additional explanation. The final ruling surprised me a bit considering the content of the story. PolitiFact often labels statements with a foundation in the truth "False" rather than "Barely True."

PolitiFact deserves the most pointed criticism for its flirtation with hypocrisy in identifying campaign "promises" using methods akin to those that helped identify this "promise" from the White House.

As an example, while PF claims it could not find where Obama specifically stated he would reduce national unemployment to 8% through the stimulus, other politicians like Florida’s new governor Rick Scott actually repeatedly spoke of promising “700,000 jobs in 7 years” for Floridians. From a debate in July, 2010:

I've created jobs in the private sector. As governor, my 7-step plan will create 700,000 in 7 years.

And PolitiFact checked out his plan, giving him a Mostly True for being about 6% off the 700,000 number, which is in keeping with its “politi-math.” PF Florida now includes it as a promise “in the works” on the “Scott-o-meter.” Obama never said it this explicitly; Bryan White relies on the “implication” from a report from one of Obama’s economic advisors. PolitiFact National never included it as a promise on the Obameter because he never said it and it was not part of his statement of policy, which makes up a lot of the Obameter. In other words, this is a rather disingenuous attempt to fault PolitiFact for not including an implicit, imprecise promise not directly made by Obama on the Obameter. So yes, I’m agreeing with Bryan White here: Bachmann's statement had a basis in fact but tended to mislead without additional explanation. So….she’s mostly false.

Mock the Dummies: How Dummies Protect Marriage

Alan Grayson should take note of this on behalf of "Taliban Dan" Webster.

Lil White Lies: NOT (This Time!)

Interesting Fact: Texas and Utah had laws until 1971 that basically said it was permissible for a man to shoot his wife's lover if he caught them in an adulterous act. It was called passion shooting. The reverse of this was called homicide. -- TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. art. 1220 (Vernon's 1966), repealed by implication by TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. §§9.31-.33 (Vernon's 1974), which set out defenses against charges of homicide.

Covenant marriage is the topic of this ruling on a comment by Florida Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson with regard to his Republican opponent “Taliban Dan” Webster.

Covenant marriage is a more restrictive marriage contract designed to prevent divorce. Grayson makes the claim in an advertisement that this would “make divorce illegal” as well as “den(y) battered women the right to divorce.” It clearly doesn’t make divorce illegal, and this was 20 years ago, for Pete’s sake! The stats show that in the other three states where it is an option, very few couples choose it. And it was an option; it was a choice. While I imagine there are a few crazy men (or women) out there that might “choose for abuse”, I’m sure that there would have been some modifications if it had been passed into law. On the “pro” side it has one very good idea which should be universal: pre-marital counseling, albeit without the religious bent.

Lil White Lies: The Smell of Surprise

Many posters on PolitiFact’s Facebook page have confronted Bryan White on his debate tactics. One of my favorites was commenter Kevin Park.

Kevin Park to Bryan White: (early July, 2010) “I gave you a short answer, because question was ridiculous. You are making bunch of statements to look smart without knowing what they mean…..I have to block Bryan White if he constantly talk[s] nonsense to me.”

Unfortunately, blocking Bryan (or anyone) is futile. The public Facebook shows all comments, so a few days later, when the posts for that particular thread had "closed" because commenters had gone on to new ones, Bryan ostensibly read  Kevin's comments "unblocked" at the public Facebook and then posted his comment as “last word” (although he and myself were probably the only ones who read Bryan’s final post to Kevin—Kevin, I’m sure, moved on, didn't know and didn't care).

Well, I wouldn’t call his talk nonsense, but this particular blog by Bryan, on a PolitiFact ruling of a recent comment on MSNBC by Alan Grayson, was definitely “a bunch of statements to look smart.”