This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 26, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Paul Krugman yearns for the days of the 50s and 60s when it comes to income equality.

He also pays tribute to the days

where fewer people changed employers through their careers. But does income

inequality itself mean anything? And would a return to loyalty to firm bring us back to the days of the

organization man? Brink Lindsay Vice President for research at the Cato Institute

and author of the new Cato paperostalgenomics comments.

Crugman, along with a lot of people on the left, you know, ring their hands a lot about income

inequality.

What does that mean and why does he think it's so important to

try to mitigate it? Well first what does income inequality mean that's a

complicated question there There's complicated

questions about what do you mean by income and what do you mean by inequality? On the

income side, do you mean pre-tax income, post-tax income? Do you mean with

transfers from the government or not? with

with, do you mean individual wages, do you mean household income,

which includes not only income from the job

but income from other sources and

your spouse's income as well. On the inequality side there's all kinds of

different ways to measure inequality. There's something called the genie coefficient

which is an overall aggregate measure of

...