海角大神

Rhetoric聽matters in economic policy debates.聽Would allowing people to purchase health insurance from the federal government be a public option, a government plan, or a public plan? Would investment accounts in Social Security be private accounts, personal accounts, or individual accounts? (See my post on the rule of three.) Are tax breaks really tax cuts or spending in disguise? Is the tax levied on the assets of the recently departed an estate tax or a death tax?

In an excellent piece in the New York Times,听 describes another important example, how we characterize differences in income:

Alan Krueger, Mr. Obama鈥檚 top economic adviser, offers a telling illustration of the changing views on income inequality. In the 1990s he preferred to call it 鈥渄ispersion,鈥� which stripped it of a negative connotation.

聽In 2003, in an called 鈥淚nequality, Too Much of a Good Thing鈥� Mr. Krueger proposed that 鈥渟ocieties must strike a balance between the beneficial incentive effects of inequality and the harmful welfare-decreasing effects of inequality.鈥� he took another step: 鈥渢he rise in income dispersion 鈥� along so many dimensions 鈥� has gotten to be so high, that I now think that inequality is a more appropriate term.鈥�