I Have to Disqualify Donald Luskin from the Stupidest Men Alive Contest

An unarmed man in a contest of wits. A correspondent emails me that National Review's Donald Luskin is puzzled because he cannot reproduce Jacob Hacker's findings of rising income instability in America:

The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid: Yale economist [sic: he is a political scientist] Jacob Hacker has been getting a lot of play in the mainstream media with his new book The Great Risk Shift -- a kind of Bush-bashing self-help book.... Hacker's thesis, in a nutshell, is that... people don't feel "economic security." His seemingly scientific proof statement is a chart of what he calls "income instability."...

I can't find any other data series that even remotely gives me this result... three that I calculated... [per capita disposable income, median households income, average hourly earnings].... All three are different measures of the volatility of income -- and none of them look the slightest like Hacker's... they lead one to the opposite conclusion -- that incomes have become less unstable through time....

One has to wonder just how Hacker tortured his data to get it to confess that incomes are more unstable today then [sic: than] they've been in the past.

Luskin's confusion can be easily cleared up. Hacker calculates the average variability of individual Americans' incomes. Luskin calculates the variability of the average of individual Americans' incomes. As everybody who has taken even one semester of statistics--or even thought about it for fifteen minutes--knows: in general the variability of the average is not equal to the average of the variabilities. Why on earth should anybody think it should be?

For Luskin to claim that there must be something wrong with Hacker's numbers because Hacker's calculations of the average variability don't line up with Luskin's calculations of the variability of the average, well...

There is a reason I have to disqualify Donald Luskin from this year's Stupidest Men Alive contest: He's a ringer. It just wouldn't be fair to the other contestants.

Comments

[derek]

Luskinia, a tiny principality which is almost an invisible speck on the French-German border, is the smallest country in the world, and has one of the highest unemployment rates. It has a labor force of just two people, and an unemployment rate of 50%. Neither of them can hold down a job for more than six months before losing it to the other.

But it's an admirably stable little country: the average income varies not a penny from year to year.

[pgl]

There is a 2nd problem with Luskin's rant. He sees Hacker's series increase during the late 1980's and early 1990's and writes that it exploded during the Clinton years. His own graph shows it dropping during the Clinton years. Oh well - this is what you get from a dimwit who confuses writing about economic issues with being an economist. Yes, that's right - Donald Luskin also claims to be an economist.

[Jonathan Goldberg]

To make Derek's example completely explicit, let us specify that the interval each of the inhabitants keeps his job, while always less than or equal to 6 months, is random within that period.

["Q" the Enchanter]

I can't say I agree with 香港书刊号 中国's comment.

[Dave Parker]

I guess the likelihood of Luskinia possessing potentially devastating WMD stockpiles is pretty random too (at least relative to the chances of a half-unemployed principality of two inhabitants posing a clear & present danger to all that we hold dear), huh, Liberals?

I reckon it's time to show those Luskinian looney-tunes some shock & awe before that hypothetical smoking gun becomes an almost literal mushroom-cloud.

[Anderson]

Just a thought -- if you're contending that Luskin's the stupidest guy alive, don't call Jacob Hacker "Paul Hacker" in your post doing so. Unless you're mercifully providing Luskin some false consolation.

[hack]

Bravo! Well played Mr. Luskin.

[ferd]

Didn't take 15 minutes to see Luskin's obvious mistake. 5 seconds is more like it.

Somebody ought to present Luskin's argument to various journalists, college students, and K-12 students, and see if the journalists can keep up with the students in spotting the flub.

[derrida derider]

That really is plumbing new depths of innumeracy. It is so bad that it took me a couple of seconds to see what he is actually saying in that extract.

Why on earth would anyone think that the rate of change in the average level of incomes for 300 million Americans have anything to do with the rate of change in any one of those individuals' income? I suspect he just doesn't understand what the term "average" means.

[ajay]

Well, Luskin's replied. And his reply goes thus:

1. I do not understand why there is a difference between the average of variability of individual income and the variability of average income.
2. Without any evidence, I suspect that it is because Hacker is incompetent or deliberately lying.
3. And Brad DeLong is fat.

http://poorandstupid.com/2006_11_05_chronArchive.asp#116330737692641886

[Cardinal Fang]

I explained this to my son, who is sixteen. It didn't take him one minute to realize Luskin's idiocy. He suggests that since Luskin has retired the trophy for the Stupidest Man Alive, the new award ought to be named the Donald Luskin Award for Achievement in Stupidity (Luskin himself being ineligible for the award, of course).

[ArC]

Why not name it "The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid Donald Luskin Memorial Award"? What an inadvertently (?) appropriate blog name.

[Cardinal Fang]

Mr. Fang wonders why Luskin's own income isn't varying, in the downward direction, after he writes such nonsense.

[Ben Fulton]

It's hard to take any blog seriously that doesn't allow commenting on its articles.

[dogfacegeorge]

Luskin diagnoses Brad as suffering "the sadness of a weakling who has found, in the web, a medium in which he can act the part of the bully."

Does anybody else diagnose projection?

[Kat]

You're fat and stupid. Howz bout dem marbles.

[Kat]

Did I mention that you look gay. And pompous. and fat? A gay fat pompous ass.

[Kat]

I take blogs that allow comments seriously. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. I bet you got beat up a lot in school.