This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 2nd, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Much of what we know about contemporary income inequality masks the fact that incomes tend to go up as we

get older and gain experience and education.

Steve Horwitz is a professor of economics at St Lawrence University.

We spoke at the International Students for Liberty Conference

held last month.

As you understand it, what are the conventional narratives

about income mobility and income inequality in the United States?

Well, I think the easiest way to summarize it, of course, is the rich are getting rich and the

poorer getting poorer, and I think relatedly that the middle class is in decline and that middle class folks are living worse than they did a generation ago.

And so what all of that seems to suggest is that inequality is worsening.

Mobility is low or non-existent,

and that poor folks are perhaps worse off,

or at least poverty is a bigger problem

in some sense of the term than it used to be.

I think that's, all those things together constitute a conventional

narrative. Okay so what is missed by that or what is needs to be teased out?

Yeah, I think I think a few things. I think the rich are getting rich poor getting poorer story in particular

relies upon people looking at the quintiles you know each 20% of the income

distribution and and there is a piece of evidence there that people can

point to it's true the top 20% have a higher share of of national income than they

...