Why read The Myth of American Inequality?

Book cover of The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate

Book description

A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2022: Politics

Everything you know about income inequality, poverty, and other measures of economic well-being in America is wrong. In this provocative book, a former United States senator, eminent economist, and a former senior leader at the Bureau of Labor Statistics challenge the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Myth of American Inequality as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Clifford F. Thies

Author

This recommendation is more technical than my previous recommendations.

The authors reconstruct many measures of income and income inequality to show that the widening gap indicated by official statistics is an artifact of certain assumptions underlying these statistics.

First, and most importantly, regarding those who are dependent on the social safety net, "income" includes only cash benefits dispensed by the government, not the cash value of non-cash benefits; and, for those who are taxpayers, "income" is defined as before-tax income, not after-tax income.

Second, monetary values are incorrectly corrected by the CPI (the authors propose using the chained-linked CPI).

The…

From Clifford's list on The best books about the global economy.