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Comment by mmcconnell1618 | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like some serious manipulation of numbers to get the result you want. Open source the data, assumptions and formulas used and I might consider your argument WSJ

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The author is "Phil Gramm"-- former republican senator who has spent his entire political career pushing for lower taxes and standard Reagan era deregulation. He was involved in passing The Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 which promptly paved the way for the Enron mess. He now works for UBS as a rich-people money shuffler.

Seems factually accurate, though the editorialized moniker of "rich-people money shuffler" is probably unnecessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Gramm#Career_with_UBS

"Rich-people money shuffling" is the most succinct description of what investment banks actually do.

Allocator is better term vs. shuffler. Consider revising your terminology.

Interesting that he's arguing in this article that taxes are a successful way to shrink inequalities, yet is also pushing for lower taxes.

I think his angle here is "we've done enough" to address income inequality, let's stop worrying about it and keep the gravy train flowing to the 1% of the 1%.

How can a layperson believe anything these respected publications publish? It seems everything is twisted or manipulated - super annoying. It is time the media took a serious look at themselves.

Does he exclude unrealized capital gains from his definition of "income"?

Favorable tax treatment of capital gains is already the primary vehicle by which the wealthy pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. I bet it would do a fine job of rigging the outcome in TFA as well!

Assumptions are laid out in the article. Are there any in particular you’re concerned about?

Yes, they specifically mention "adjustments" due to changes in the way the Census collects data. They don't explain what those adjustments were and why they were needed. It all feels very much like adjusting the axis on a graph to make a big slope look smaller or to take small slope and make it look like a hockey stick. Smells very much like manipulating data to get the results you want.

He explains pretty directly why they were needed - current measures of inequality ignore significant government transfers to low income people.

As to the details, yes, it would be interesting to dig into.

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