mbs: I didn't say what we are adding; only that comparing distributions for different populations requires attention to differences between the populations.
Since you brought it up, I don't doubt that some of the change in inequality for the worse is due to immigrants who are paid less and whose families have lower income, on average.
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Most immigrants add more to the economy than they receive in wages and
benefits from society (pretty well documented by the Urban Institute at this
point) so the higher income -- or even steady income -- of the previously
poor or median workers is possibly due to those very immigrants, so you
can't analyze the economy in this static way.
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mbs: Sheesh. I didn't even raise this. My position is I agree with first part, and if it isn't true I don't care. It does not follow that this must raise the wages of formerly poor or median workers.
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With exploitation of those immigrants partly fueling the economic growth
funnelling to the top, this argument blaming inequality on the immigrants
entering the demographic analysis just seems very wrong.
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mbs: My whole point was that the addition of lower incomes need not literally drag down the incomes of those already here, though it does reduce the average of the 'new' enlarged population. See the Tom-Dick-Harry story in my other post.
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For leftists, the problem of inquality is precisely the problem of
exploitation and to in any way explain way inequality by the existence of a
new additional exploited class is an odd statistical sleight of hand.
-- Nathan Newman
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Explaining or understanding the derivation of a calculation is one thing, what I was driving at. Understanding its political-economic roots is quite another, which I did not touch on.
mbs