Income Mobility -- A Lifetime of Data

In Sunday's NY Times, Mark Rank from Washington University provides a take on "income inequality" looked at from an individual longitudinal perspective, rather than from a desire to create hysteria about abstract statistical groupings. Here are some of his findings:

• Almost three-quarters of the population will be in the top 20% of income earners at least once in their lives.
• Only 12% of the population will be in the top 1% of earners more than one year during their lifetime.
• Only 0.6% of the population will be in the top 1% for more than 10 consecutive years. 

This paints a very different picture than the President and his friends who would like you to think of "The Rich" as a small monolithic group standing at the gates of wealth barring others from entering.

Common sense would tell you that if you took a snapshot of people in their twenties and compared it to a snapshot of people in their fifties, there should be a very large difference in income between the two groups. Should you be upset by this? Would you conclude that those in their 20s are doomed to low incomes for the rest of their lives?

The hysteria that Democrats are trying to generate would be akin to looking at major league baseball batting data, observing that only 1.4% of all hitters batted over .325 in 2013, and then trying to convince players that they have no chance of having a number of multi-hit games during this season. Might as well hang up the spikes and turn to the commissioner to fix this awful situation.