My favorite bit from the debate was Cox's assertion that we are all better off now because we have the benefits of bottled water.
We debated on a PBS show out of Dallas called the McCuiston (pronounced "mc Question") Show. The host is a very slick ex-banker of that name. There was a greater variety of libertarians in that audience than in any other room I've been in. All kinds of little institutes and clubs I'd never heard of. They got all upset and excited when another participant -- from the DLC -- asserted that FDR was not a socialist. It was a hoot.
mbs
Peter Kilander quoted:
>With their wealth of
>knowledge about economic statistics, Cox and Alm could have written a
much
>better book if they had felt less need to be cheerleaders.
Cox & Alm are guilty of some of the most devious uses of statistics I've ever seen. They've been making their arguments in essays accompanying the annual reports of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for the last 5 years or so (see the list at <http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/pubs/annual.html>). The 1995 edition was all about upward mobility - titled, of course, "By Our Own Bootstraps." If I may quote myself, from LBO #84:
<quote> Inventing bootstraps. The right's sacred text on mobility is W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm's essay "By Our Own Bootstraps," published in the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' 1995 annual report. While the class position of Fed research may not be to everyone's liking, it's usually rigorous and informative. Cox and Alm's stuff isn't. It was a study designed to make a point, and it stacked all the numbers its way.