<story><title>A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality</title><url>https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digitalmaster</author><text>So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed &amp;quot;Reaganomics&amp;quot;, advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rwcarlsen</author><text>As an engineer and computational scientist, drawing conclusions from correlations like this is absurd.  Maybe Reagan was good for income inequality or maybe he was bad for it.  Did you control for the other variables before drawing your conclusions?  What about:&lt;p&gt;* The governments&amp;#x27; legislation and economic policies in countries like the USSR, China, etc. in the 80s&lt;p&gt;* Changing technology especially communication technology&lt;p&gt;* Changing levels of education in the world.&lt;p&gt;* Lingering&amp;#x2F;diminishing trends&amp;#x2F;effects from wars like: Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam War, etc.&lt;p&gt;* Changing age distribution of humans in western countries,&lt;p&gt;And on and on.  The world economy is extremely complex with heavy nonlinear feedback effects.  How can you possibly state things like Reagan caused X w.r.t. the world wealth distribution with such confidence?</text></comment>
<story><title>A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality</title><url>https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digitalmaster</author><text>So looks like the 80s is when things start going south (increased income inequality) so I looked up who was president during that time, then looked at their wiki page to see their economic policy and found this gem of a quote:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed &amp;quot;Reaganomics&amp;quot;, advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roenxi</author><text>:P Ouch, going right for the partisans. Presidents are important people, but they are a lot more reactive than is generally accepted - what about the theory that Reagan was reforming economics &lt;i&gt;in response to&lt;/i&gt; some deeper underlying problem [0]?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;assets.weforum.org&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;150710-US-petroleum-consumption-voxeu-chart.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;assets.weforum.org&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;150710...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>