Julia Conley / Common
Dreams
Critics of massive wealth
inequality in the United States defended a statistic frequently cited by 2020
presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday after Glenn Kessler,
author of the Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker” column, claimed the
fact that the bottom half of the country has zero or negative wealth was
“not especially meaningful.”
The statistic in question was
brought up most recently by Sanders during the Democratic primary debate last
week:
“We have three people in this
country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America,” Sanders said.
The statement, Kessler said,
is factually true—but he rejected Sanders’s suggestion that the inequality
evidenced by the fact means that a major correction to the U.S. economy is
required.
“This snappy talking point is
based on numbers that add up, but it’s also a question of comparing apples to
oranges,” Kessler wrote. “But people in the bottom half have essentially no
wealth, as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have. So the comparison
is not especially meaningful.”
Critics denounced Kessler’s
suggestion that the notion of 50 percent of the population of the world’s
richest country carrying so much debt that any wealth they own is canceled out,
could hold no meaning about the state of the nation’s economic system.
The column, wrote Sanders’s
speechwriter, David Sirota, should be filed under “things you can’t make up.”
THINGS YOU CAN'T MAKE UP:
WashPost "fact checker" @GlennKesslerWP
criticizes @BernieSanders for
saying 3 families control more wealth than the bottom 50% - Kessler says
because the bottom 50% have no wealth at all, this is "not especially
meaningful."
“Glenn Kessler’s logic
here—that it’s ‘not meaningful’ that the bottom 50 percent of earners have no
net worth because they have a bunch of debt that’s obscuring all the assets
they do have—is a completely nonsensical take,” wrote journalist Matthew Chapman.
I'm with Sirota on this one. @GlennKessler's logic here — that
it's "not meaningful" that the bottom 50% of earners have no net
worth because they have a bunch of debt that's obscuring all the assets they
*do* have — is a completely nonsensical take.
Kessler’s dismissal of the
plight of middle-income and lower-income Americans was indicative of the desire
of many to ignore “perfectly correct data” which “point out ugly truths” about
the United States, wrote Greg Greene, a blogger for Planned Parenthood Action.
Kessler somehow, in his role
as one of America’s most prominent fact checkers, keeps mistaking economic
orthodoxy for facts … https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/1088437682877870080?s=21 …
… and in holding to his
assumptions, Kessler insists on scolding folks — like Bernie Sanders, or AOC —
who, use perfectly correct data to point out the ugly truths hidden by his
green eyeshade. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hey-dems-take-it-from-this-ex-centrist-we-blew-it …
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