To Aristippus: Wasn’t the vote against Australia becoming a Republic a result of how the question was phrased? In that the choice wasn’t between “I want a republic” and “I want a monarchy”, rather it was between “I want a republic with a president appointed by parliament” and “I want a monarchy”, isolating voters who wanted a republic where the president was elected directly (like America). I guess it could be argued that this is an example of ‘elites’ manipulating the question, so as to divide the republican base and cause the referendum to come out in favour of maintaining the monarchy? (Although I wouldn’t personally make that argument)
What do people think of this study? It argues that almost all studies of “income inequality” in the US rest on meaningless income tax data that fails to take into account changes in tax policy over time.
Since “income inequality” is a ratio (income going to top X percent/income going to bottom X percent), the disparity can be made to look larger than it is by inflating the numerator, as income tax data does. Shrinking the denominator will also do the trick: income tax data does not include the many transfer payments that the poor receive and the larger returns the middle class is increasingly earning on tax-favored government savings accounts.
If you control for these factors, as the study does, the supposed increase in the share of income going to the top 1% becomes negligible. The trend of increase in CEO compensation also disappears (since CEOs have been taking more stock options in individual income), and CEO pay instead appears to merely rise and fall with stock prices.