And those income quintiles typically don’t look at income after taxes and transfers. Not sure if we’d prefer it or not. But yes, lots of mixed fruit here.
Sorry this one is just going to be a drive-by. This way you all will have plenty of time to coordinate the plea coppage.
Yes, more Sowell:
“At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient at that level. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005.
Among the top one-hundredth of one percent, three-quarters of them were no longer there at the end of the decade.”
If any of this is to be believed, Libertarian Land would be an awful place for a lot of people:
No thanks.
You actually had to go back that far? How about something more recent?
The article itself is dated Posted: Nov 27, 2007.
It’s also from Townhall.com, or as many of us call it, ClownHall. Not even remotely a reliable source of information.
Sowell is intellectually bankrupt. He spouts a lot of fluffy blather but rarely alludes to sources. In one rant, he urges the readers to look stuff up for themselves and touts the tax-cut-driven prosperity the country experienced during the Coolidge and G. W. Bush eras. Yeah, those turned out well.
Here is a gem from Mr. Stupid Sowell
First, what does it take to get into the 1%. From googling top 1% wealth
Living in the Bay Area, I can tell you that the average house even in San Francisco does not cost $8 million. And that assumes that the seller has 100% equity in it. Not likely. It also assumes that the seller is moving to a poor area and does not have to put money into another house.
The number is much lower if you are talking income, and if I sell my house I’d get into the 1% in income. But if you are talking about the rich becoming poor, you need to consider wealth, not income. I’m retired now, not getting Social Security or a pension, and I have a reasonable amount of money in post-tax investments, some in cash. If I wanted to, I could adjust my income to be officially poor. But I’m actually doing quite well.
Notice that Sowell does not mention where the people falling out of the top 1% or 0.1% wind up. 1.1% 0.2%? Boo hoo. He hardly shows that these people become poor or even middle class.
Are your ideological blinders on so tight that you don’t see what a liar this asshole is?
A drop of $1 million in your investment portfolio is usually disastrous - unless you have $100 million or more, in which case it is in the noise.
Sowell also apparently assumes a significant portion of Americans own a home in San Francisco. Which is obviously not the case. And being as it’s not the case, Sowell’s statement essentially doesn’t say anything.
Yes the pleas copped were mighty strong. Not a single person addressed the quotes I posted.
You missed the point unsurprisingly. The point was to give an example of when the statistics do not actually say what the secondhand pundits are saying they say. There are many such examples, Sowell names a few. He does not suggest that this particular example accounts for a large amount of the error.
So how much of the statistics are accounted for by that rather extreme hypothetical?
How many areas in the country have such an extreme cost of housing combined with people with a low enough income and own a house that selling the house makes that much of an addition to their “income”?
And again, why did you have to go so far back to bolster your claim? Nothing more recent?
Yes you googled “1% wealth” because you first googled “1% income” and your jaw dropped at how low it was, so you proceeded to construct a different argument than the one we were having.
So in other words Sowell’s point about 1% income was entirely correct but you would prefer another statistic that he didn’t address.
If someone sold his house and ended up as an evil 1%er for one year, the person would most likely not return to that level the next year, and could conceivable drop several quintiles.
Idk but since handwaves and Voyager’s thrilling retirement stories is the only thing I’m getting as an argument, I think I’ll let my claims rest as is.
Wasn’t handwaving. Just would like something that pertains to the past couple of years rather than 22 years ago.
The median sale price is around a quarter million. But much of that goes to paying off mortgages. How much, I don’t know.
Up to now, I’d assumed the libertarian policy regarding poor people was “hurry up and die, already.”
Then let me make this very clear. This is directly related to the quotes you posted.
Mr Sowell’s views on economics are only factual to the extent that he is able to back them up with evidence. When he can’t back them up with evidence, they’re just beliefs. People can believe in anything they want to; the free market will solve all problems, the state will wither away under communism, kings rule by divine right, Donald Trump will make America great again, Jesus was born from a virgin, etc. But these things are just beliefs not facts.
An anecdote is not significant evidence. Home ownership in San Francisco is so rare that it qualifies as an anecdote. For every person who owns a home in San Francisco, you could literally find a thousand Americans who do not own a home in San Francisco. So offering home ownership in San Francisco as “evidence” in support of an economic theory is actually an admission that you have no real evidence to support the theory.
If you want people to take Sowell’s economic theories seriously, you better post some evidence to support them. If you want people to take your economic theories seriously, you better post a better source than Sowell to back them up.
And only the appreciation would be “income.” Plus, the first $500,000 of gains from your primary home are excluded from income anyway.
Did this subthread really start because WillFarnaby disputes the statistic that most European societies have much more economic mobility than the U.S.? So he introduced occasional home sales to justify his stance? Low income people can suddenly prosper in the U.S. by selling their homes??
Please PM me if Farnaby answers #158. Even the Flat-Earthers and Truthers each have their coherent manifesto; but I’m still trying to find one for Hyperlibertarianism.
For tax purposes. It’s still income if we’re just tallying. But you’re right, gains only.
Wrong. I googled wealth first since your contention is that lots of rich people fall out of being rich, and that is a function of wealth, not income. And nothing that Sowell writes supports your contention.
Now, if someone sells a $1 million dollar house that he paid $750K for, he would not be in the 1% since that amount of increase is not taxable. When you can make a boodle some might be. Which is one of the reasons the inventory in the Bay
Area is so low - sell and get slammed by taxes.
Nonetheless, as I said, selling the house may or may not add to your net worth depending on what you buy to replace it.
The vast accumulation of wealth by the top 0.1% and 1%, which Sowell doesn’t even mention, conveniently for him, is the real problem. That does not come from one time events like house sales. Why don’t you try addressing that and not link to strawman columns by conservative cretins.
And the problem is that if you sell a house that has appreciated by more than $500K (and many homes in my neighborhood are in this situation) and buy an equivalently priced house, your wealth decreases because of the tax burden. Your income does spike, but it does not make you an richer.
Sowell ignores wealth which is stable in favor of income which is more erratic.