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Okay, you actually want names of economists: Edward N. Wolff, Ajit Zacharias, and Thomas Masterson a the Levy institute just published a paper showing the Gini was up to 6.2 as of 2004 (a drastic increase). Robert Folsom, just published an article on it the other day. Peter Wallison is a vert well known economist and he's been writing articles and giving interviews about this for a decade. Did you want more names?

First, I didn't say whether I thought income disparity was increasing or decreasing - I simply questioned whether you could name an economist who said it was increasing and that it increasing would be a problem.

That said, I thought your list was kinda funny. Peter Wallison takes the stance completely opposite of you on regulation. In fact, so opposite that he helped Ronald Reagan develop proposals to deregulate financial markets. If he's correct about income disparity, are you sure he's not correct on deregulation? And if he's incorrect on deregulation, how can he be trusted about income disparity?

As for Edward N. Wolff, Ajit Zacharias, and Thomas Masterson of the Levy Institute of Bard College... If you had even bothered to read the introduction of their paper (assuming you meant this one), you'd notice that they actually disagree with you. From their introduction:

Economic disparities among population subgroups in the United States have, in some cases, undergone profound transformations over the last half century; in other cases, disparities persist. Official poverty rates among the elderly, for example, are now in line with overall poverty rates; in the past, the elderly were much more prone to poverty. Meanwhile, disparities between racial sub-groups persist in spite of some improvement.

Apparently that wasn't what they wanted to see, so they made up their own measurement, the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-being, or LIMEW for short. Not surprisingly, when the economics department of the second most liberal college in America makes up a unit for measuring income disparity, the measurement shows more income disparity than the traditional measurements. Just one catch - even their new measurement says the situation is improving overall. From their conclusion:

The LIMEW provides a different picture of disparities among population subgroups. According to the LIMEW, racial disparities decreased from 1959 to 1989, but then increased to 2000, while both EI and MI show a narrowing of disparities over the period. (All three indices show almost no change between 2000 and 2004.)

But it's almost irrelevant anyway, because the paper isn't measuring disparity between "rich" and "poor", but based on race, age, sex, marital status, education and some other factors along those lines.

I couldn't find the Folsom article you mentioned, but given his other work I'm a little skeptical that he's the economic authority you're making him out to be.

Ahh, but we're providing for the national defense by redistributing wealth.

That doesn't even make sense. Paying somebody for a service they provide doesn't fite the traditional definition of "redistributing wealth."

Umm, who says we should hand cash to the poor? That's not socialism. Socialism is taxing the people to provide services and industries by the government, instead of by the private sector. Redistribution of wealth comes in when we tax the wealthy at higher rates than the poor in order to pay for shared services. That is to say, when we

Like the guys at Ellliott Wave.com are doing: extrapolating social trends, human behaviour and stock markets (as a reflection of these trends). They have been highly successful for the last couple of decades, accurately pinpointing highs and lows in the general mood of the human collective. The way they do this is by researching human behaviour that seems to correspond to a collection of "laws". If the humans are taken out of the equation, I wonder what will result. The stock market might represent a straight line, life might become boring (but nobody will know, except for the few that refuse to participate in the revolution) and there will be nobody breaking the law ... because we all are the law.

Just some random thoughts. Heck I might write a novel myself :-)

I think Kevin Mitnick can :-) At least he had the time to think about it...

I have also read The art of deception by Mitnick. I think people enjoying KYE will enjoy Mitnicks book as well.

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I for one welcome our techno... AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!

--- Proud never to post as an AC
(Friendly request to visit this site on Elliott Waves)

Mandelbrot wasn't the first to model financial markets using fractals. Elliott was.

Mandelbrot invented the term and took credit for that observation.

Meanwhile I'll just put the horrible orange colored volume containing the original teletype generated printout of the Brooks-Matelski set back on the shelf.

Actually I'm pretty excited about finding this. It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that Mandelbrot is little more than a self-publicist. People should see him give a presentation. It's like a sales pitch for himself.

I wonder if there are any web pages about that other IBM-paid self-publicist - Chaitin.

The wave theory Prechter is talking about is the Elliott Wave Theory addressing the cyclic nature of all aspects of human society including economic markets and cultural trends.

The waves describing traffic patterns come from fluid dynamics.

Prechter's theories may predict the number of cars on the road by looking at things such as good economy==move cars purchased, less use of mass transit vs bad economy==more two-income households, more commuters vs really bad economy==less two-income households because they can't find two jobs.

But that won't describe the behavior of those cars once they're on the road or explain why one interchange design is better than another. That's fluid dynamics.

Prechter's most interesting stances have been these:

(1) He predicted the dot-com burst and was calling for it when the dot-com's were strong. He was seen as extremely controversial in this respect and anybody who said this was considered an idiot who obviously did not understand the market. His predictions were based on the wave principle and also worked within other predictors in the market. Having read his theories, it is actually very impressive. To find more about his actual predictions on the market, you can find them here: www.elliottwave.com

(2) A few days or a week before the 9/11 attacks, he made the prediction that a terrorist attack would occur on American soil. At the time, this just sounded ridiculous. It sounded a lot less ridiculous when it happened almost immediately. Note: By his own admission he did not expect it to happen so quickly. This, by his theory, was because of the global downturn in social mood.

(3) Prechter also predicts deflation. Note that he talked about this when nobody else was talking about it. I remember because I mentioned this possibility to some financial people and they basically said this was nuts. And of course, it seems like not such a bad theory now and other books are publishing it. But if you made this theory a year or two ago, nobody was backing it. You would have been thought stupid.

Prechter makes a lot of assertions like these while simultaneously debunking the false logic in other financial predictors. He does look at history but he looks WAY back including all the depressions to find patterns. He finds and shows these patterns. I haven't done enough research to know definitively what I like and don't like but I have read enough to take it seriously.

Then I've got two words for you: Elliott Wave.

look here to read about how human behaviour can be predicted to some extend.

Basically it states that when charting man's progress this will appear as a fractal - zoom in on it and you will see the same patterns over and over again.