Who are the 1 percent? Two new views

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-who-are-the-1-20140207,0,5422171.story



Steve Jobs: Not your typical one-percenter.

Who are the 1 percent? Two new views
By Michael Hiltzik
February 7, 2014, 4:22 p.m.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert M. Solow has leveled a blast at a recent attempt by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw to explain rising income inequality and the primacy of the 1% in the U.S. as the result of "just desserts" going to the talented people making important economic contributions to society.

The tenor of Solow's approach can be gleaned from the opening words of his piece, which fault Mankiw's analysis for its "unstated premises, dubious assumptions and omitted facts."

Mankiw, in his return fire, dismisses Solow's attack as "scatter-shot."

The exchange, which appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, was prompted by an article by Mankiw last year in the same journal titled "Defending the One Percent." Since the complaints of the one percent that they are woefully misunderstood and unfairly, even dangerously, targeted for obloquy is big these days (I'm talking about you, Tom Perkins), it's worth taking a look at what these two creditable economists have to say about the topic.