Link Banana

Thought-provoking piece Mark Gimien about the irrelevance of the much-touted Gini coefficient in capturing the inequalities of everyday life. His conclusion:

When economists talk about inequality, they are talking about something that can easily be captured in an equation about national income. When noneconomists talk about inequality, however, they have in mind not their neighbor’s wallet, which they can’t see, but their own, which they can. They are thinking of what they can and cannot afford, and also of the most visible extremes of wealth and poverty around them. That’s why India’s Gini index may be lower than our own, and yet it will be the rare person who will say that India is more equal in any sense that matters. When we talk about inequality, it’s not about resentment of the next door neighbors’ pool. It’s about gut issues: whether we feel poor, whether we feel that those around us are poor. That’s why it’s worth thinking about in the first place. Unfortunately, the usual way that economists talk about and measure inequality tells us next to nothing about it.

As people across this country rush to complete their taxes and assure that the big bad IRS, Mark Gimien offers a piece that should have been called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the IRS.”

But the IRS I have come to view with something approaching affection. For each of the last several years, I have owed the IRS money at tax time. And each time, rather than hauling me off to prison, the IRS has done its best to make my life easier.