
Misleading statistics about household incomes in USA - tn13
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/09/misleading-statistics
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fcsuper
As per usual for Thomas Sowell, he pretends to offer insight when he actually
attempts to confuse the issue. He relies on outliers and misunderstandings to
make his point. For example, he says that someone who earns $200K from the
sale of their home will show up as an equal statistic as someone that earned
income of $200K yearly. No. No. No. That's not how it works. Money made from
homes where the _profit_ less than $500K is not counted at all as income for
your own residence because it is understood that this money will likely go
right back into the next home you buy in that same year. Now, if you are
buying and selling homes for profit as a business, then that _IS_ a business,
and counts as income from that business.

His conclusion? "This means that statistics on income inequalities are often
comparing high multi-year earnings with lower single-year earnings -- that is,
comparing apples and oranges." He is taking an extreme minority of cases
(which he calls "high multi-year earnings") and comparing that to the most
common cases of normal yearly income (which he calls "lower single-year
earnings") and saying these two are happening in such parity that the
statistic about household incomes is "comparing apples and oranges". No, Mr.
Sowell, it is you who are comparing apples and oranges.

