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Income Disparity and the Mississippi River

© Frank Monaldo

"More than ever before, opponents of Liberalism are broadcasting pseudo-science, demagogic politics, crank economics, and think-tank propaganda in easily parroted sound bites."

Myth: Income inequality is not the cause of this nation's social problems.

Fact: Studies by Harvard and Berkeley prove the correlation, and strongly suggest causation.

Harvard and Berkeley conducted two studies that also found that income inequality, as opposed to absolute standard of living, is responsible for higher death rates . . .'' — Steve Kangas, Liberalism Resurgent: A Response to the Right Web Page.

The southern half of the Mississippi River lies in a broad flat flood plain. Occasionally, a storm causes the normally lazy and meandering river to overwhelm its banks and cut a new channel. In Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain noted that:

"In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year . . . . Any person can see that 742 years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along with a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. " [Emphasis added.]

Actually scientists are generally careful about conjecture and extrapolating to conclusions that reach beyond the data. Polemicists, however, are not so reticent or constrained. Of particular interest here is the use of limited, ambiguous studies to score broad political points and receive "wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

One crux of the liberal versus conservative dialogue is the question of income distribution. Liberals argue that free markets cause large disparities in income. Conservatives counter that the freer the economy, the faster it grows. The faster it grows the wealthier everyone gets, even those at the bottom of the income distribution.

What is more important: absolute income or income disparity?

To buttress their argument, Liberals would like to be able to demonstrate that "income inequality, as opposed to absolute standard of living, is responsible for higher death rates . . ."

In support of this argument, a 1996 study in the British Medical Journal by Bruce Kennedy, Ichiro Kawachi and Deborah Prothrow-Stith of Harvard University [1] is often quoted. In the study, the authors found a correlation between mortality and indices of income disparity from state to state. However, closer examination of the study reveals that it is limited and inconclusive and does not support the argument that income disparity is more important than absolute income.

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