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Cavuto? Liar? Or Fool?


So Cavuto goes after Krugman, claiming he's lying about inequality:

CAVUTO: Here’s what I’m saying that you’re doing: You are lying to people. That’s what I think that you’re doing.

KRUGMAN: I haven’t heard a lie yet. But, look, if that’s the way you want to do it, I mean, fair and balanced, go all the way. Look, c’mon, the fact of the matter is–

CAVUTO: No, no, you don’t have to be snide. You have to be factual.

KRUGMAN: You’re being snide.

CAVUTO: No, no, you’re mentioning good data. You’re saying there’s a growing divide between the haves and have nots. Others have argued that very effectively and very eloquently, just like you. All I’m saying is that the math that applied now, can’t you apply it in other periods, when there have been Democratic presidents who’ve had the same dislocations? You’re saying that it’s somehow dramatically worse now than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago?

KRUGMAN: Yeah, actually, it is dramatically worse now than it was 10 years, 20 years ago. All of the measures of inequalities have just gone off the charts. It didn’t start with Bush — and I actually say that if anybody, you know, buy Rolling Stone, read the article — it actually starts even before Reagan, so this is not just Bush. The point of the matter is that, when, in these last five years, as it’s becomes clear that this is a really growing problem, that most people are not sharing in the economy’s growth, the policies of Bush have been at every point to push that inequality further.

Do I need to point out that Krugman was not lying, that by every single measure I'm aware of, income inequality has been going up dramatically for two and a half decades?

So here's my question - does Cavuto really believe the bullshit he's spouting? Or does he know that, in fact, he's the liar? Does he understand that his job is to muddy the water so that people think there's some question about whether inequality is increasing? Ot is he a stupid tool of others?

Liar, or fool?

Update: Gandalf points out (correctly) that Think Progress put up a chart of wealth disparity, not income disparity. Angry Bear caught it as well as some info on the difference.


Ian Welsh December 5, 2006 - 7:58pm
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My vote

I think Cavuto believes it. I go with the fool category.

LJ December 5, 2006 - 9:04pm
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Foolish liar

EOM

Bolo December 6, 2006 - 3:28am
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Krugman is a leftie propagandist

Often he cherry picks the facts to fit the democratic agenda. Not good. The stupid he can convince but who needs the stupid.

Sometimes he picks nice reality facts like: "The US government uses more money to health care than France".

Technically he is not a liar, but at the moment I can't define what's the difference.

And Think Progress is another shame here. They wrote just a couple of sentences and mixed immediately wealth and income. The introduction to the picture speaks about income equality but the picture is about wealth inequality.

Definitely we dealing here with people who don't know what money is :-) I think that they are not poor but mentally poor.

-- 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood

Gandalf December 6, 2006 - 8:19am
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Maybe I'm too harsh

with Krugman. There are plenty of similar rightie propagandists, but only one leftie?

-- 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood

Gandalf December 6, 2006 - 8:47am
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It really doesn't matter

It really doesn't matter whether you talk about income or wealth in the US, the trend is substantially the same, though wealth differentials are worse as far as we can tell (which is difficult, because wealth data is much harder to get than income data).

As for Krugman, I've found him to be pretty reliable. Take the France thing.

The French as of 2004 (latest OECD figures) spent 3159 per capita. Of that 78.4% is provided by the government. That works out to the government spending 2476.66 per capita.

The US spent 6102 per capita. Of that 47.7% is provided by the government. that works out to government spending of 2910.65 per capita.

The US spends more gross. It spends more per capita. And the government spends more. The US government, according to the latest OEC figures (which you can check here: ) does in fact spend more than France. I would add that if you check the cross tabs you'll also find that the US unquestinably has worse health care results than France.

Krugman often looks like he's wrong, because he states his case in very strong terms, and doesn't usually qualify it with the caveats one would expect of an academic (hard to do in the 800 word format of a columnist even if you wanted to), but I've rarely found him to actually be wrong about things. He is, actually, a very competent economist who has done important work.

Ian Welsh December 6, 2006 - 8:54am
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Politics is his hobby

I agree that at least once he has not used biased figures to support his claims in NYT.

Wealth is different beast than income. Additionally, most often people believe that increasing debt (credit) is income.

I think that you should not mix his academic work and his hobby as NYT columnist. I haven't noticed cooking of the numbers in his academic papers.

And the inequality is a necessity. When economic laziness is a personal choice, the person is to be rewarded less. The lazy are supposed to have more freetime anyway. Some of them try to compensate the laziness by being greedier (Hint: It seems to work). The essential question is: What is fair in concrete terms?

My experience is that many people advocate "equality" as long as they expect a personal benefit.

The wealth comparisons are most useful for business in identifying rich customers. In the study of the inequality, the essential question is: What the poor don't have?

(In the US the problem with the health care costs seems to be that the sector employs unnecessary people in the bureaucracy. If the costs were cut, they should be fired, and where would they go?)

-- 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood

Gandalf December 8, 2006 - 11:40am
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I glanced 143 comments

None of them seemed refer to the difference between wealth and income.

I quote comment #143:
It’s easy to argue like a rightie, since you don’t have to know what you’re talking about.

I did read your comment about higher education in the USA. Maybe many of those poor commentators have a bachelor's degree.

One of the commentators pointed out that the graph was visually misleading and another one reminded of GINI, which is a thumbrule to measure inequality. I see those two having potential.

-- 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood

Gandalf December 6, 2006 - 8:46am
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I've spent a fair bit of

I've spent a fair bit of time kicking around those numbers. They do support Krugman's contention. In fact I think Boddad posted the GINI coeffecient numbers here once. I don't generally like using GINI for a general audience both because there was a huge revision in the 90's, making the chart have this huge gap, and because it doesn't mean much to normal people - other figures show what's happened somewhat better.

However, you're absolutely right that Think Progress screwed up.

Ian Welsh December 6, 2006 - 8:57am
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Cavuto? Liar? Or Fool?

I'll give Cavuto the benefit of the doubt, and say he's botha liar and a fool! But seriously, he's a liar. Go to Media Matters at: http://mediamatters.org/items/200610240008 for proof. summary below.
more details at media matters web site.
Summary: Oct. 24th - Fox News' Neil Cavuto did not challenge Tony Snow's false claim that "since the president cut taxes in 2003, the Dow Jones is up 60 percent. The Nasdaq is up 80 percent." But even under the most favorable criteria, Snow's statistics are plainly wrong. And when adjusted for inflation, the value of both stock indices has decreased since President Bush's first major tax cut package in June 2001.

miker December 6, 2006 - 11:35am
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Cavuto & Krugman on inequality

the socialists at the Financial Times of London, have an article saying that the wealthiest 2% hold half the world’s assets.
I guess the fact have a liberal bias...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/41470ec0-845b-11db-87e0-0000779e2340.html

By Chris Giles, Economics Editor in London

Published: December 5 2006

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth.

A survey released on Tuesday shows that middle-income countries with high growth rates still have a long way to go before they have a hope of catching up with the levels of prosperity of the richest.

Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent, according to the data from the World Institute fpr Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-Wider).

To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37m adults have achieved.

So much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in few hands that if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use.

Almost 90 per cent of the world’s wealth is held in North America, Europe and high-income Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia.

While North America has 6 per cent of the world’s adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth.

The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 per cent in the US holding 70 per cent of the country’s wealth, compared with 61 per cent in France, 56 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany and 39 per cent in Japan.

According to Anthony Shorrocks, the director of UNU-Wider, the number of wealthy individuals in a country depends on the size of the population, the average wealth and its inequality.

“China fails to feature strongly among the super-rich because average wealth is modest and wealth is evenly spread by international standards”, he said.

As countries grow richer, their population changes how it holds wealth, according to the report.

In developing countries, property, particularly land and farm assets are important, while cash savings tend to dominate in middle-income counties.

Only in certain advanced countries such as the US and the UK with developed financial sectors is there a strong appetite for holding equities and other more sophisticated financial assets.

Debt is also low in poor countries because financial institutions do not exist to allow people to borrow.

In contrast, the authors say “many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and, somewhat paradoxically, are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth.”

Wealth is difficult to measure even in the most advanced countries, so the research was based on painstaking compilation of aggregate and survey data for the 38 countries of the world where it exists and statistical models for the rest of the world.

miker December 6, 2006 - 11:45am
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Selling old carpets in the flea market

Wealth is difficult to measure even in the most advanced countries, so the research was based on painstaking compilation of aggregate and survey data for the 38 countries of the world where it exists and statistical models for the rest of the world.

You never know exactly what's the price before you have sold it.

The networth of Kamprad is either 17,000,000,000€ or 54,000,000,000€ depending on the source. Both estimates are "accurate" if he doesn't sell IKEA.

And value is another thing. You become rich by understanding the difference between value and price.

-- 101 ways to avoid the subjunctive mood

Gandalf December 8, 2006 - 11:07am
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