I've read LBO for a while now--trying to 'learn me' some economics--and i've never posted before but I happened upon a question I thought might best be answered here. I found a critique (http://www.poorandstupid.com/2003_12_21_chronArchive.asp#1072042942396099 5 8) of Krugmans latest article in the nation: "The Death of Horatio Alger." His main point seemed to be Krugman selectively used the data by choosing a year bad year to begin at. My first question is, is there anything to this attack? My second question is about the fact that you obviously have to choose some date to begin analysis so what is the common consensus (I know there probably isn't any) economist have come to about dates to use? Is it simply a matter of all economist massaging data to back up their assumptions? Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
Jim
======================
Here's the link to Thomas Piketty's homepage: http://pythie.cepremap.ens.fr/~piketty/indexUS.html
As far as I could tell, while his homepage doesn't have the paper to which Krugman refers, the article
«Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998», Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, pp.1-39 (2003) (jointly written with Emmanuel Saez) http://pythie.cepremap.ens.fr/~piketty/Papers/PikettySaez2003.pdf
is pretty much the same in terms of methodology, data sources etc. The Quarterly Journal of Economics is considered one of the finest mainstream econ. journals --the politics of economic theory aside, if only for a moment.
Ian