Good news, everyone! Being a sociopath is not immoral!

This editorial by Harry G. Frankfurt, writing for Bloomberg View, caught my attention. Especially the following paragraph:

Exaggerating the moral importance of economic equality is harmful, in other words, because it is alienating. It separates a person from his own individual reality, and leads him to focus his attention upon desires and needs that are not most authentically his own.

In other words, if you "exaggerate" the moral importance of of economic equality, you run the risk of veering away from sociopathy. So, beware! More basically, the whole editorial seems to be arguing against the strawman argument that people concerned with economic inequality on moral grounds want equality of outcomes. That is not a widely held position by people who argue about the importance of economic inequality.

The Rise in Earnings Inequality, Dissected

In their NBER working paper, Firming Up Inequality, the authors find:

Covering all U.S. firms between 1978 to 2012, we show that virtually all of the rise in earnings dispersion between workers is accounted for by increasing dispersion in average wages paid by the employers of these individuals. In contrast, pay differences within employers have remained virtually unchanged, a finding that is robust across industries, geographical regions, and firm size groups. Furthermore, the wage gap between the most highly paid employees within these firms (CEOs and high level executives) and the average employee has increased only by a small amount, refuting oft-made claims that such widening gaps account for a large fraction of rising inequality in the population.

To say the least, this is an interesting finding, if it holds up to scrutiny. The implication is that the rise in earnings inequality over the past few decades is as a result of new firms paying higher wages than previously existing firms. So the earnings inequality breaks down into a new economy/old economy dichotomy.

If I only had a brain

Let's play find the logical fallacy [hint in the post title]:

. . . economic inequality is not what is holding Americans back.
"The challenge isn't that some people are successful and some people aren't. Taking from the successful people to provide for those that aren't isn't the solution," Bush said after a closed meeting at the Metropolitan Republican Club on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Did you find it? Answer below the fold.

My little ponequality?

If you haven't already seen the outstanding video below prepare to have your My Little Pony hearts broken: