JustBusiness17
New Member
I know it's not uncommon to catch Lee Doren (aka HowTheWorldWorks) spinning distortions to support his pro-business agenda which he hides in a libertarian disguise. In the process of searching for info on the recent VidCon event, I saw one by Doren and decided to watch it for the lulz. It was basically him drooling over the celebrities he got to meet while sounding a little bummed out that nobody cared who he was...
Anyways, I figured I might as well see what he's been lying about recently and found he did a critique of one of those PSA white board videos. Here's what I'm talking about:
So, beyond addressing all his clever misdirection (he is a marketing communications graduate after all) I figured I would focus in on the crux of his argument. At 4:49, Doren cuts away from the main video to go over some census data in order to set up the idea that David Harvey (the "narrator") is lying with statistics. He says that even though household income has been decreasing, real per capita income has doubled over the period (since 1967) that Harvey is referring to. Doren tries to bolster this point by explaining that people per household has been decreasing which explains the smaller income...
Ironically, while Doren implies Harvey is lying with statistics, it's actually Doren that is being deceptive. Despite shows like 'John and Kate plus 8' and 'Octomom' making headlines in recent years, I would speculate that the family unit has shrunk slightly in the last 40 years. Obviously children don't produce income so an increase or decrease doesn't change much other than disposable income. But lets assume for arguments sake that these are income earners who are leaving the households and how that ties in with the video...
The point that Harvey was making is that the US has shifted to an artificial credit market built primarily around home loans. In other words, people who couldn't afford homes were lent the money to do so which effectively reduces the average number of people per household (in addition to crashing the world economy, but I digress). So, how can both David Harvey and Lee Doren be correct at the same time? The answer is that they're not... Only Harvey is!
So how can Lee Doren be wrong when the statistics were right in front of our eyes? Well, the deception was so simple, I would be surprised if anyone fell for it, but he does pander to Tea Party activists and Libertarians, so it's worth pointing out :arrow: Yes, 'per capita' income has increased dramatically, however, 'per capita' isn't talking about the same thing that Harvey is. Rather than rambling further, here's what the New York Times has to say on the subject:
As you can see by these final paragraphs, Doren's elaborate point falls flat on its face. 'Per capita' income may have doubled since 1967, but only 55% of that went to the bottom 90% of the population. Almost certainly, the majority of that 55% is concentrated in the top 10% of those remaining with progressively less trickling down to the remainder of the population.
====
In the end, we can chalk this up as just another effort by Lee Doren to propagate capitalist sentiments in order to earn his own salary from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and probably a host of other radical right wing organizations...
Anyways, I figured I might as well see what he's been lying about recently and found he did a critique of one of those PSA white board videos. Here's what I'm talking about:
So, beyond addressing all his clever misdirection (he is a marketing communications graduate after all) I figured I would focus in on the crux of his argument. At 4:49, Doren cuts away from the main video to go over some census data in order to set up the idea that David Harvey (the "narrator") is lying with statistics. He says that even though household income has been decreasing, real per capita income has doubled over the period (since 1967) that Harvey is referring to. Doren tries to bolster this point by explaining that people per household has been decreasing which explains the smaller income...
Ironically, while Doren implies Harvey is lying with statistics, it's actually Doren that is being deceptive. Despite shows like 'John and Kate plus 8' and 'Octomom' making headlines in recent years, I would speculate that the family unit has shrunk slightly in the last 40 years. Obviously children don't produce income so an increase or decrease doesn't change much other than disposable income. But lets assume for arguments sake that these are income earners who are leaving the households and how that ties in with the video...
The point that Harvey was making is that the US has shifted to an artificial credit market built primarily around home loans. In other words, people who couldn't afford homes were lent the money to do so which effectively reduces the average number of people per household (in addition to crashing the world economy, but I digress). So, how can both David Harvey and Lee Doren be correct at the same time? The answer is that they're not... Only Harvey is!
So how can Lee Doren be wrong when the statistics were right in front of our eyes? Well, the deception was so simple, I would be surprised if anyone fell for it, but he does pander to Tea Party activists and Libertarians, so it's worth pointing out :arrow: Yes, 'per capita' income has increased dramatically, however, 'per capita' isn't talking about the same thing that Harvey is. Rather than rambling further, here's what the New York Times has to say on the subject:
So isn't this exactly what Harvey was elucidating in his video? It seems to me his entire point was that labour wages (which excludes the filthy rich) have been relatively stagnant in a growing economy. But wait, there's more...Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans - those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 - receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Cuts to benefits? Didn't I hear Doren imply that benefits packages had gone up?... He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending. The analysis by the two professors showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5 percent of all reported income in 2005.
That is an increase of more than 2 percentage points over the previous year and up from roughly 33 percent in the late 1970s. The peak for this group was 49.3 percent in 1928. A major issue likely to be debated in Congress in the year ahead is whether reversing the Bush tax cuts would slow investment and, if so, how much that would cost the economy.
As you can see by these final paragraphs, Doren's elaborate point falls flat on its face. 'Per capita' income may have doubled since 1967, but only 55% of that went to the bottom 90% of the population. Almost certainly, the majority of that 55% is concentrated in the top 10% of those remaining with progressively less trickling down to the remainder of the population.
====
In the end, we can chalk this up as just another effort by Lee Doren to propagate capitalist sentiments in order to earn his own salary from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and probably a host of other radical right wing organizations...