The choice is not between rich with poor or everyone making $50,000 a year the choice is between rich with poor and everyone making $1200 a year. Do the math.

And why is it whenever income inequality is the greatest that the economy is booming? Equality = poverty. Inequality = growth.

ArthurKirkland: Just as I look forward to the day when conservatives stop whining and moaning about perceived biased in academic circles. Any disparity is treatment of conservatives is readily explained by a number of factors — liberals are smarter, liberals are less likely to fall for dogmatic gibberish, conservatives are money-grubbers who disdain altruism (and in some cases consider it a moral failing), students prefer instructors who make sense, there are relatively few people who can swallow conservative dogma in this country, liberals do not reject science — and, besides, conservatives have plenty of conservative-dominated enclaves endowed by dim-witted heirs and selfishness-prizing tycoons. Why force our finest institutions to lower their standards by seeking out conservative faculty members — especially when everyone knows the smart, hard-working conservatives go to Wall Street for big bucks? Do we want to turn Harvard and Berkeley and Yale and Amherst into Texas Tech and Oral Roberts and Wyoming and Grove City?My point exactly. I’ve already tired of explaining why conservatives should consider themselves lucky to possess their current representation in academia.

What rubbish; mindless drivel supported by nothing except your own religious hatred of anything to the right of Hugo and Fidel. That has to be one of the most insanely arrogant comments I have seen anywhere to date.

You wouldn’t happen to have any cites for these BS claims you’re making, would you? “Liberals are smarter” – yeah, right. Where are the studies that prove that inane, hubristic remark, and please, not ones conducted by “liberals”?

And “liberals are less likely to fall for dogmatic gibberish”. I assume here you mean, like, religious stuff. But the leftist religion is actually much more dogmatic than the traditional ones, because you have to believe all the Marxist tenets apply to here on earth, right now. The old-style religious are trying to get to a paradise in the next life, while the left believes that we can have paradise now, all you have to do is kill off the several billion who don’t believe. You have your own devils (Bush, Limbaugh, et al), your gods (Obama, Marx, et al), your bible (Das Kapital), and your 12 commandments (the Rules of Alinsky). When is the last time you haven’t excommunicated followers for being pro-life, or anti-jihad, or deniers of the Holy AGW?

“…conservatives are money-grubbers…” well somebody has to have, like, real jobs or something to actually produce things and generate tax revenues to support the leftists gorging at the government teat. And conservatives “…disdain altruism…” except it turns out that isn’t true, either, is it?
John Stossel
Leftists love to give away OPM, but not their own.

And as to what students prefer, you’ll no doubt have a cite for us there too?

And “…liberals do not reject science…”. Ya got me there. They actually embrace science, and then turn around and twist and spin and politicize it to prove that Mr. Marx and his progeny, algore, were right all along.

David Welker: If someone works half-time due to having young children, of course they should be paid less. Should their long-term prospects at the firm be less? I don’t think so.

Well, I don’t know. If they work half time for 10 years they’ll only have 5 years experience…

But sometimes I get the impression that folks who are unable to work overtime or to do professional development on their own time feel that they shouldn’t be penalized professionally relative to those who do. You’d expect someone who spends time with his family insead of working extra to have less professional success and a more rewarding family life than someone who doesn’t have as much of a family life. That’s how tradeoffs work.

Are you asking in terms of the short-term or the long-term? If someone works half-time due to having young children, of course they should be paid less. Should their long-term prospects at the firm be less? I don’t think so.

David Welker: That said, one could hope (perhaps naively) that the reduction in income inequality in terms of gender at law firms that has occurred due to the recession outlives the recession and that it will help influence a restructuring of law firms so that they are more friendly and flexible concerning the aspirations of both men and women who would like to make family a higher priority like it properly should be.

Sure, but not everyone’s the same. Some folks don’t have families, and therefore don’t make family much of a priority. Other folks have just a wife, or older kids, and can make work more of a priority. Some folks have younger kids and have to make family more of a priority. Shouldn’t the firm value the folks who are able to make work more of a priority?

Why would the firm want to be friendly towards a policy of not making the firm your highest priority?

Because “the firm” is an abstraction for a group of people, and it is possible for reasonable people to intelligently realize that family rightfully come first and respect others who make family a priority. It is called being grounded in basic values, a concept that is obviously foreign to you, but not foreign to all human beings nor all lawyers.

Can you point to any law firm on planet Earth that meets this standard?

Really?? I am not going to even respond, except by asserting that there are a whole lot of law firms out there. Why don’t YOU prove that there aren’t any. =)

restructuring of law firms so that they are more friendly and flexible concerning the aspirations of both men and women who would like to make family a higher priority like it properly should be.

Why would the firm want to be encouraging workers to consider something other than the firm as their highest priority?

Can you point to any law firm on planet Earth that meets this standard?

But it’s by no meant obvious that a reduction in income inequality is “good,” unless you believe that a reduction in income inequality is an end in itself.

True. This is one of the problems with using an imperfect measure like income equality or GDP. The good thing about income inequality or GDP is that these things are easy to measure. The bad thing about them is that they are imprecise measures of what we are trying to accomplish. Even worse, we imperfect humans sometimes have a tendency to think of our goals in terms of the things that imperfectly measure them and lose sight of the real goal.

That said, one could hope (perhaps naively) that the reduction in income inequality in terms of gender at law firms that has occurred due to the recession outlives the recession and that it will help influence a restructuring of law firms so that they are more friendly and flexible concerning the aspirations of both men and women who would like to make family a higher priority like it properly should be. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.

David Welker: Just because this small good is so heavily out-weighed by the short-term and long-term negative effects of the recession which caused it to occur does not mean it would be incorrect to single this out as a small silver-lining to an otherwise bad event.

But it’s by no meant obvious that a reducton in income inequality is “good”, unless you believe that a reduction in income inequality is an end in itself.

[H]ow can less income inequality be considered even “some” good news if it’s because everyone is poorer? Where is the “good” in that?

You are confusing two different concepts. In the aggregate, an event can be bad, even very bad, but it can have a silver-lining. For example, a recession could be really bad both in the short-term and long-term, but it also might lead to some people getting a college education and becoming more productive as a result.

Just because this small good is so heavily out-weighed by the short-term and long-term negative effects of the recession which caused it to occur does not mean it would be incorrect to single this out as a small silver-lining to an otherwise bad event.

Really good question. To answer it, I think we need to return to basic principles. In our society, wish some exceptions, we generally believe that people should be judged based on their individual characteristics. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I think one general principle here is that people should be judged based upon their individual characteristics, and not assumptions based on generalizations.

Now, we could not run our entire society based on this principle, however. For example, it would be nonsense for someone to get life insurance based entirely on their individual characteristics. No one knows precisely how long any individual will live. We can only make estimates based on statistics concerning how long other individuals have lived. That is, we make judgments about an individual using data from others. Without doing that, we could not really have insurance markets (and the immense benefits that insurance provides in terms of spreading risk). Even so, with insurance we can still make quasi-individual judgments. Your age is an individual characteristics. However, some 20-year olds will live less than ten years. Some 80-year olds will live longer than ten years. But, based on data about other individuals in society, insurance will be provided at a lower rate to the 20-year old than the 80-year old, because this is usually a good bet, even though it isn’t in this particular instance. Really, even though insurance companies are “sort of” evaluating you on your individual characteristics, they are doing it based on crude generalizations that are only accurate in the aggregate.

But note. This judging people in such a crude and generalized way is not generally acceptable. We do not generally approve of age discrimination or gender discrimination. But insurance markets are more efficient the more data we allow them to use. In fact, I doubt the life insurance could function very well at all without allowing price discrimination based on age.

It is true, of course, that individuals do not choose their age or their gender. But if we do not allow insurance companies to use such data, they will face the problem of adverse selection–most people would wait until they were really old to buy life insurance, if they had to pay the same rates as the oldest among us, even if they bought it when they were much younger. The end result would be inefficient insurance markets. There would be a deadweight loss in which people who would like to pay more than enough in premiums for insurance given their risk, but who are prevented from doing so because no insurance company could consider their positive risk characteristics. Just as people cannot choose their age or gender, these people would not be able to choose whether or not to buy insurance. So, what we are left with is a genuinely hard choice. Either some people have to pay more because of characteristics they cannot control, or some other people who do not have those risk characteristics will not be able to pay for insurance at all because they will be priced out of the market. Ultimately, we choose to allow some generalizations to influence the prices paid by individuals because if we didn’t do so we would (1) not have an insurance market at all or (2) much less efficient insurance markets where many people would be priced out, especially due to the problem of adverse selection.

That said, efficient insurance markets are not everything. For example, we do not want people denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions. Instead, we want to provide healthcare to those who need it. Even if it would be more profitable for insurance companies to monitor our credit card purchases and our bank accounts when selling us life insurance, we would probably not let them on privacy grounds. Other examples where we would not want to allow maximally efficient insurance markets because that conflicts with our other values abound. Most of us would not want insurance companies doing genetic profiles on us or prying into our personal financial information and considering precisely how many alcoholic beverages we have purchased in the past year in making insurance pricing decisions. Even if it were profitable for insurance companies to use race in setting insurance rates, we are going to draw the line and say no.

But, every line we draw makes insurance markets somewhat less efficient, so expressing our values in this way is not a free lunch. We need to decide on a case-by-case basis when it is acceptable to do so. Which evil shall we embrace? A less efficient insurance market or people being judged upon characteristics they cannot control? Which is the lesser evil? The lesser evil varies based upon the individual context. We neither want insurance markets to malfunction nor do we want our individual and social values to be compromised.

Let us consider the use of gender in car insurance. Young males are charged more for insurance than young females. Why? Because young males are riskier drivers. They are more likely to speed, race other people, and drive recklessly. Many young males are driven, probably by testosterone, to drive in a more risky manner than many young females.

What to do… There is somewhere a young male driver who is very safe behind the wheel and a young female who is a reckless mad woman. To some extent, hopefully we capture this difference because the young female will have traffic tickets and accidents and the young male will not. However, not all the difference in risk will be captured by these individual factors. Especially since being given tickets or getting in accidents are partially random events. So, what you have are some safe male drivers who are in effect penalized by higher premiums by the risky behavior of their male peers. And you have some reckless females who are wrong rewarded by the generally safe behavior of their female peers. That isn’t good, but what is the alternative?

The alternative is to prevent insurance companies from engaging in price discrimination based on gender. But this will be a really bad outcome for good drivers who are female. Some of them will even be priced out of the market and will not be able to have insurance at all. And anyway, just because we don’t allow gender price discrimination doesn’t mean that people are judged on their individual characteristics. Some safe young female drivers are now in effect being penalized by higher premiums or being driven out of the market entirely because of the testerone-driven recklessness of some young male drivers. Is this really MORE fair? I don’t think so.

Credit ratings work along the same lines. No one knows ahead of time precisely which individuals will default and which will pay their bills. So it is necessary to make individual judgments based on data from groups. The same issues apply. There is a tension between judging people based on the content of their individual character and classifying them based on the groups they fall into.

So, why would I allow price discrimination based on zip code in car insurance markets but not in credit markets?

First of all, I think credit is typically a much more important determinant of future opportunity than car insurance rates. It is a much bigger deal when a prospective entrepreneur gets a loan to start a new business or does not get such a loan compared to whether an individual pays somewhat more or somewhat less for car insurance. Since it is a much more important decision, the social value of judging an individual based on their individual character and less on crude generalizations rises. Furthermore, if lenders use zip codes to rate credit, it is likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of poverty in certain zip codes. You could live in the “nice” area of a zip code, but it would become economically depressed because of the “bad” area that also exists in that zip code. Do you really want the decision of the Post Office in drawing a new boundaries for a zip code to have such a heavy influence on the economic fate of a particular community and on property values? Do we really want to create self-fulfilling prophecies where previous poverty in a community prevents innovative entrepreneurs from arising to transform that community?

In contrast, it would be really ridiculous if drivers in Omaha, Nebraska had to pay higher insurance rates because voters in New York City refused to make the hard decisions to improve their own infrastructure and make driving more safe. Driving in New York City is more risky than driving in Omaha, Nebraska. It is also more of a luxury, whereas in Omaha, Nebraska, it is closer to a necessity. Finally, we would not expect major negative effects by allowing insurance companies to engage in price discrimination between New York City and Omaha, Nebraska.

Anyway, to conclude, you really have to look at the individual context to make decisions here. There is no simplistic top-down analysis that can be brought to bear on the topic of price discrimination. You have to look at the facts on the ground and then make a decision. You cannot simply say that price discrimination on some basis or another is acceptable or unacceptable without thinking carefully about the particular market in question.

In contrast, it is safe to say that gender discrimination in law firms or trying to impose a particular gender identity on an individual against their will is ethically immoral. There is much less need for a case-by-case analysis. Obviously, I am not saying that these subject are totally unrelated, but they are very different.

Oren: Why don’t we exclude the part-timers from the calculation, then. In fact, we could read Figure 2 Ratio of Female to Male Earnings (Medians) for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers.

I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons for the disparity. But I sure don’t see any evidence that people are voluntarily overpaying people of a certain gender is a significant factor.

But if one group tends to choose part-time work over full-time work, and that leads to group pay disparities

Why don’t we exclude the part-timers from the calculation, then. In fact, we could read Figure 2 Ratio of Female to Male Earnings (Medians) for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers.

It is the position of liberals that both are important. It is the position of conservatives that all that matters is growing the pie, even if most peoples’ slices become much smaller and all of the increases go to a select few.

I think you mischaracterize both liberals and conservatives to some extent. If either group were truly forced to look at their beliefs, they’d realize there isn’t that much dichotomy. Outside of political tribalism and bloviating, most everyone would agree both a larger pie and a more equitable distribution are ideal. Many conservatives donate their money and time to the needy, which is a private form of redistribution. And I don’t think anyone would agree that society would not be worse off if the pie stayed the same but the bottom 90% were forced to give their wealth to the top 10%.

The disagreement comes from how best to balance pie growing and pie slicing when they are at odds, which they often are. Conservatives tend to take a more supply-side view: focus on increasing the pie and the rest will follow. They say that even if low and middle-class inflation-adjusted incomes have remined stagnant for the last decade, wealth has still increased for them because of upper-class investments and production of, for example, technological goods. Liberals aren’t so nearly convinced and believe a strong social safety net is necessary and desirable even if the pie does not grow as quickly. Private attempts to provide such a safety net have shown to be inadequate.

Of course this is all completely irrelevant, as politics is not about policy. Pretty much any discussion on income equality (actually any political discussion) I have come across devolves into both sides making arguments not from their sincere beliefs on what is good policy, but rather from tribalistic urges to signal one’s allegiance to the faction they’ve so emotionally committed to. Hence we have liberals attempting to find a silver-lining in a world where everyone is worse off (how can less income inequality be considered even “some” good news if it’s because everyone is poorer? Where is the “good” in that?) and conservatives attempting to argue inequality doesn’t matter at all (it does, and a very strong economic argument backs it up).

But if one group tends to choose part-time work over full-time work, and that leads to group pay disparities, there will be tons of idiots (probably yourself included) who act as if the pay differential is a second Holocaust.

I don’t think very many people are concerned that someone who voluntarily chooses to work part-time makes less than someone with identical skills and experience who works full-time. Do you REALLY think this is what many people are concerned about?

Clearly, Jews in Germany were persecuted because of their religion rather than because they were more successful. But heterosexual white Christian males in America are successful, and it can only because of their own biases. Therefore it is okay to persecute successful people if they are heterosexual white Christian males. Because it’s absolutely inconceivable that heterosexual white Christian males succeeded based on their own merits, the way Jews just happened to succeed in Germany.

I was wrong, however. Keep talking. You complete me.

ricky: “History is just a long tale of white hetero christian males getting the short end of the stick.”I get it dude, irony!!!And what you’re saying is that because white hetero christian males have been successful previously, it’s completely OK to discriminate against them now.Word!“Sins” of the father and all that!!I remember when I used to live in Germany, we used the same justification to establish that all those greedy Jews deserved anything they got!!!And we sure took them down a peg, LOL!!!!!!!!!1

The difference is that pricing insurance based on zip codes is BIGOTED and RACIST and STUPID, and charging men more for insurance is just common sense. What, are you a stupid bigoted racist?

I get it dude, irony!!!

And what you’re saying is that because white hetero christian males have been successful previously, it’s completely OK to discriminate against them now. Word! “Sins” of the father and all that!! I remember when I used to live in Germany, we used the same justification to establish that all those greedy Jews deserved anything they got!!! And we sure took them down a peg, LOL!!!!!!!!!1

According to this article Obama does [think that income equality is an end in itself]. I think many people do.

Obama doesn’t say that in the article you link to. From the article:

At the top of his list would be shifting the tax burden more toward the wealthy and making investments — in health care, alternative-energy research and education — that would cost a significant amount of money but could ultimately lift economic growth.

“The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with,” Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said.

It’s certainly plausible for someone to believe that trickle-down growth is better than bottom-up growth, but both are predicated on growth. “Economic growth” ≠ “income equality is an end in itself.” Perhaps elsewhere Obama has said what you claim.

ricky: “I was wondering where you draw the line.”Most leftists draw the line at discriminating against their special “protected” groups in favor of heterosexuals, Christians, whites, or men.Discrimination is completely OK as long as you only discriminate against those groups.

That’s right. History is just a long tale of white hetero christian males getting the short end of the stick.

Speaking as a white, heterosexual, christian male, please stop talking. You are giving us all a bad name.

Yes, of course. But suppose there are correlations involving Zip code that aren’t explicable purely via differences in the number of vehicles on the road.

Or just return to your credit example. What is the difference between an observed correlation between living in a certain Zip code and risk of default and an observed correlation between gender and risk of an accident that makes it OK to take account of one but not the other?

ShelbyC:
But don’t all predictive exercises involve doing that.We generalize that people who went to law school will be better lawyers that people who didn’t, etc.What I was responding to was Dilan’s comment that gender discrimination is inheirently evil.Now paying women less because you don’t like women is wrong, but there are clearly forms of gender discrimination that aren’t evil.I don’t think Curves not allowing men is evil, for example, nor do I think insurance companies using gender to assess risk is evil.I was wondering where you draw the line.

Fair question. The usual place to draw the line is when the discrimination becomes institutionalized. For example, if the insurance company only looked at my gender to set my rate, that would be unfair, and they do not do that—companies, I believe, will look at driver record before gender. When a company does go looking at one particular stat and acts on that stat alone—say, redlining neighborhoods—then you cross into discrimination. Evil is probably too strong a term, but it is clearly unfair.

It is also important to note what stat we are going to choose to discriminate around. For example, there are many communication studies which note that women tend to be better at conciliation and compromise than men (again, this is just a generality.) Why does that not become the key quality we will discriminate around?

Back to the law, and employment. People in the comments have been using statistical argument to justify “discrimination,” and that is the heart of the problem. To apply a statistical generalization to an individual and assume that it typifies that individual is a hasty generalization—you are rushing to judgement on that particular person. (It should be noted that the article Kerr is discussing also just assumes that the stat tells the whole picture.) We do these things when other factors are not available for us to assess. In the SAT example, we use it as a predictive, along with high school record. But we leave it behind later—did anyone’s employer ask about their SAT in their first post-college interview? For that matter, did anyone ask about your college grades 5 years out from college. That is why we interview—so we can make a judgement about the person, not the person’s stats. If you are a boss, and you are going to be “discriminating” in your choices, choose (and pay) based on who the employee is, not what they are. Because you do not have to rely on actuarial tables to tell you who that person is.

Your point makes perfect sense. But if you look closely at what I wrote, you will see that I was talking about credit decisions, not insurance rates for driving, with respect to zip code. Of course it should be permissable to set insurance rates for driving based on zip code! It would be ridiculous to have identical insurance rates in New York City and Omaha, Nebraska when presumably drivers in the latter location have much less risk of getting into an accident.

ShelbyC:
Well, about forty years ago that possibility was significantlly higher, and the pay gap was significantly bigger.

Yes, but it doesn’t really matter that much; for many forms of employment the risk of you not being in your current job in a year’s time has little relevance to how useful you are as an employee (in fact, employers may prefer people who don’t stick around and develop seniority), and unlike many reasons someone might leave a job, at least a woman who leaves because of pregnancy is likely to give her employer well over 30 days notice.

Most leftists draw the line at discriminating against their special “protected” groups in favor of heterosexuals, Christians, whites, or men. Discrimination is completely OK as long as you only discriminate against those groups.

I guess I’m also reminded of the quote from the true narcissist: it is not enough that I succeed: others must fail! Apparently plenty of people actually think that way.

Ike: The insurance company is taking a generalization (women are safer drivers than men) and applying it to me. I would rather be treated as an individual. It should also be noted that the insurance company is gambling at this point—just because they choose to charge some women less does not mean they will not actually cause an accident.

But don’t all predictive exercises involve doing that. We generalize that people who went to law school will be better lawyers that people who didn’t, etc. What I was responding to was Dilan’s comment that gender discrimination is inheirently evil. Now paying women less because you don’t like women is wrong, but there are clearly forms of gender discrimination that aren’t evil. I don’t think Curves not allowing men is evil, for example, nor do I think insurance companies using gender to assess risk is evil. I was wondering where you draw the line.

ShelbyC:
Well, wasn’t traditional gender discrimination often based on the risk of women leaving to have children?What’s the difference between that and gender discrimination in car insurance?

“Traditional” gender discrimination was based on many things, including the idea that women were frail, prone to hysteria, poor in competitive situations, unable to command in leadership situations, cycles of the moon, etc. However, you are correct. It is unfair that I pay more for car insurance because I am a man. The insurance company is taking a generalization (women are safer drivers than men) and applying it to me. I would rather be treated as an individual. It should also be noted that the insurance company is gambling at this point—just because they choose to charge some women less does not mean they will not actually cause an accident.

All statistics do is compound individual examples for easier reading. The mistake is to then take those statistics and apply them to individuals, and use them as a justification for a decision. If I am in a job interview, I would rather you look at me, and my accomplishments, rather than my genitalia. Unless it was Ricky.

Anthony: However, that effect is generally inadequate to explain the actual pay differential, and the possibility of having children at some later point is hardly cause to significantly alter pay scale ahead of time.

Well, about forty years ago that possibility was significantlly higher, and the pay gap was significantly bigger. There are many possibile reasons for the pay gap, and the theory that employers are voluntarily paying men more to do the same work, for no benefit and at great legal risk, seems to me to be the least plausible. A more likely reason is that men are perceived to be better performers, and you can argue over whether or not that perception is correct, but I’d imagine that this answer is unknowable.

I don’t quite understand the judgments of your sensitive ethical antennae, I guess. If purchasing habits or Zip code correlate well enough with driving behavior that it is worth an insurer’s trouble to ascertain them and apply them in assessing risk, doesn’t failing to do so affect the lower-risk driver in much the same way that you acknowledge that failing to use the age and gender correlations would? It would seem to me that, if anything, the ethical difficulty ought to be with using those correlates that an individual driver has no power over. I can move, and I can change my purchasing habits, but there’s not much I can do about my age or sex.

And why ought it to matter whether something that correlates with risk also “correlates with race or ethnicity”? I confess that I don’t see how it can be OK to use a suspect classification (gender) openly in pricing car insurance, but not OK to use a classification that merely correlates with a different suspect classification. What am I missing here?

ShelbyC:
Well, wasn’t traditional gender discrimination often based on the risk of women leaving to have children?

No. It is common to have a pay gap which can be explained by noting that some women leave the work pool for a number of years and wind up behind on the pay ladder (there are reasons it might be desirable to compensate for this event, but it’s not an irrational bias). However, that effect is generally inadequate to explain the actual pay differential, and the possibility of having children at some later point is hardly cause to significantly alter pay scale ahead of time.

I look forward to the time when people stop bitching because those who work harder earn more

Just as I look forward to the day when conservatives stop whining and moaning about perceived biased in academic circles. Any disparity is treatment of conservatives is readily explained by a number of factors — liberals are smarter, liberals are less likely to fall for dogmatic gibberish, conservatives are money-grubbers who disdain altruism (and in some cases consider it a moral failing), students prefer instructors who make sense, there are relatively few people who can swallow conservative dogma in this country, liberals do not reject science — and, besides, conservatives have plenty of conservative-dominated enclaves endowed by dim-witted heirs and selfishness-prizing tycoons. Why force our finest institutions to lower their standards by seeking out conservative faculty members — especially when everyone knows the smart, hard-working conservatives go to Wall Street for big bucks? Do we want to turn Harvard and Berkeley and Yale and Amherst into Texas Tech and Oral Roberts and Wyoming and Grove City?

And why does income inequality have to have an explaination? Some folks have it better than others, for a wide variety of reasons. Some folks are smarter, better looking, and healthier, too.

My point exactly. I’ve already tired of explaining why conservatives should consider themselves lucky to possess their current representation in academia.