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Brad DeLong has responded in his usual bullying ad hominem way to my questions about Jacob Hacker's statistics on "income instability". Jabba the Economist sez:

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...

Okay as far as it goes, but merely pointing that there is usually a difference between the variability of an average and an average of individual variabilities doesn't even begin to address the point I raised. The fact remains that Hacker's chart simply looks nothing like any of the other charts of income variability -- it's not just unequal, it's a massive outlier. DeLong is simply guessing when he says -- with his usual pompous self-assurance -- that the methodological difference he cites is the explanation for this. For all DeLong knows, Hacker has made any number of possible errors or distortions in the way he's processed his data. Even if DeLong's guess turns out to be right, that still leaves open the very real question of why -- and what it means that -- the two methodologies yield virtually opposite results. Perhaps there is some causal connection between higher individual variability and lower overall variability. But DeLong won't go there... he would certainly never open up a line of argument suggesting that indivuduals taking personal responsibility for their economic outcomes produces an "ownership society" that is wealthier and more stable overall. Better to just make a guess to defend a liberal icon, and call me "stupid" for not making the same guess.

And as along as we're doing the ad hominem thing... is it just me, or has anyone else wondered what it means that DeLong would have just redesigned his web site to feature this particular picture of himself? Of all the pictures in the world that he could have chosen, what about this one commended itself? What attributes does it have that DeLong considers especially essential to his communication of himself to the rest of the world? Is that look of bored arrogance supposed to underscore the haughty voice with which he preaches to the admiring choir at his site? Is it a deliberate celebration of morbid obesity, as though to suggest the DeLong is so brilliant that such afflictions of the flesh just don't matter? Who knows... but as long as we're making guesses, here's mine: it doesn't take a genius to look at that picture and see the sadness of a weakling who has found, in the web, a medium in which he can act the part of the bully.

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