Krugman on the history of inequality

That Old-Time Inequality Denial - NYTimes.com

 This short, sharp post by Krugman on the Piketty/Giles controversy is well worth reading in full.  Heck, it's short, so let's just cut and paste it (please forgive me Paul):

Brad DeLong links to the now extensive list of pieces debunking the FT’s attempted
debunking of Thomas Piketty, and pronounces himself puzzled:

I still do not understand what Chris Giles of the Financial Times thinks he is doing here…

OK, I don’t know what Giles thought he was doing — but I do know what he was actually doing, and it’s the same old same old. Ever since it became obvious that inequality was rising — way back in the 1980s — there has been a fairly substantial industry on the right of inequality denial. This denial didn’t rely on any one argument, nor did it involve consistent objections. Instead, it involved throwing many different arguments against the wall, hoping that something would stick. Inequality isn’t rising; it is rising, but it’s offset by social mobility; it’s cancelled by greater aid to the poor (which we’re trying to destroy, but never mind that); anyway, inequality is good. All these arguments have been made at the same time; none of them ever gets abandoned in the face of evidence — they just keep coming back.

Look at my old article from 1992:  every single bogus argument I identified there is still being made today. And we know perfectly well why: it’s all about defending the 1 percent from the threat of higher taxes and other actions that might limit top incomes.

What’s new in the latest round is the venue. Traditionally, inequality denial has been carried out on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and like-minded venues. Seeing it expand
to the Financial Times is something new, and is a sign that the FT may be suffering from creeping Murdochization.

It's interesting to note his complaint that the right wing arguments against worrying about equality involved throwing up everything and seeing if anything would stick.

What other matter has been dealt with by the Right (particularly the American Right) in a similar way?   Climate change, of course.  (See the Skeptical Science list of 155 failed arguments against climate change and its effects.)

Yet, hilariously, the same Right wing which is attacking Piketty slapped themselves on the back last week about how they thought that Giles had shown that Piketty was "cherry picking" and fabricating his way to a position - just like those damn climate change scientists at the IPCC!  (See the country's wingnuttiest of all economists Steve Kates on that.)

Of course, they had gone off completely prematurely about Giles (see here for details) just as they did with the meaning of the "Climategate" emails, and the current atmospheric temperature record of the last decade or two.   And anyone with common sense could see that they were grasping at these things without thinking about it in any depth at all.

They continually claim that ideological motivation in others is overriding proper analysis, while being blind to their own ideological blinkers causing the outright error of refusing to believe detailed, repeat scientific analysis.

We live in very frustrating times.