This looks good Jon. I have a stylistic suggestion - I think you have to have sources for all of the graphs. If you dont want to add them to each slide then have a list at the end, listed by slide number.

I like the slides a lot. Impossible to please everyone as presenters each have their own way of talking, etc. A minor comment though.

More substantively, the intro slides — basically up through slide 20 on cons inequality — are a bit lax about explaining and being clear about the data. Specifically, two points. First, some slides use pre-tax income and some slides are after-tax. Second, I would include some mention of whether the data refer to individual level inequality or household level inequality. Not necessary to show all possible measures of inequality, but it should be clear what the data refer to.

I am more "concerned" about the first point. If I were giving a talk, I would first want to present inequality before the govt explicitly gets involved. So, I would start by just looking at pre-tax income inequality. Then later I would get into redistribution through taxes and compare pre-tax inequality to post-tax inequality. It is also at this stage that I would introduce consumption inequality. I view consumption inequality as more similar to post-tax inequality. It tends to point to lower inequality because it accounts for redistribution occurring via taxes and transfers.

So, my comment is more on the order of presentation, and a little on being careful not to ping-pong between different income definitions.

Thanks so much for your comments. They are very well taken and helpful. I’ll make changes over the next week or so and will let you know when a revised presentation is available if you’re interested.

Author suggests s/he will make positive statements but then makes assertions like \"This is all adjusted for inflation, so incomes did go up at all levels, but it just wasn?'t distributed very well\" and \"But unfortunately, the picture is even worse when it comes to wealth inequality.\" The Piketty and Saez \"U\" data depicted on slide 4 has been challenged and I\'ve heard is about to be definitely overturned. The revised picture will show a shallow bowl instead of a U. Slide 5 seems to equate slowing growth with increased inequality. While that may have occurred, cause and effect has not been established and should not be hinted at because of course there were periods of rising inequality and economic growth. A similar problem arises on slide 13, which is entitled \"winners and losers\" although the message is more like \"bigger winners and smaller winners.\"

In Slide 14 it is disingenuous to refer to a \"transfer\" of wealth or income to refer to a change in share. Even more importantly, this slide and corresponding discussion misses other government policies that may increase economic inequality, particularly Social Security, which imposes a regressive tax to fund a life annuity that reduces the assets the poor can bequeath had the taxes been invested in life insurance, real estate, and/or financial securities.

The discussion of labor protections is also disingenuous because it does not consider the effects on quantity of employment. While higher minimum wages and rates of unionization undoubtedly help those with jobs, it drives the income of those kept out of the labor force to zero, which of course greatly increases inequality. Slide 15 and the discussion fails to note that total taxes are obviously > amount redistributed. Some of that undoubtedly goes to defense and other clear public goods but much is spent in ways that many Americans find dubious. That creates tax resistance and \"avoision\" strategies.

In Slide 17, note again the effects on employment mentioned above. As for the chart, I\'m pretty sure that \"hourly compensation\" does not include benefits, most importantly healthcare costs. Once those are added back in, the divide is not nearly so pronounced. In addition, it is not clear that the scaling is correct. A 25 year old working paper is not very convincing evidence.

Slide 18 is problematic because a) see above re: the Piketty U curve and b) claiming causality. Moreover, it fails to account for the economic reasons for the decline of private sector unions, which has much to do with the declining share of manufacturing in GDP. Slide 19 should be about competition in markets, not in \"the economy.\" The graphic is inscrutable as is the description of it, including this claim: \"Increasing competition can therefore increase the incomes of higher income households buy [sic] increasing the return to investing in businesses.\" Effi Benmelech, btw, is trying to provide empirical support for the claim \"If there are fewer and fewer firms competing for the same pool of labor, wages for that pool of labor are likely to decline.\"

The graph on Slide 20 is not really evidence because it is unclear how the dashed red line was computed. In 21, this claim really needs to be unpacked as it seems to make a number of assumptions about elasticities: \"Beyond that it has likely increased inequality by adding to the pool of (relatively scarce) high income workers, generating more high-income workers, and the pool of low income workers, likely also reducing wages among the low skilled already present in the population.\" Rather than trying to optimize a Gini coefficient, it might be better to think of the fairness of people\'s income.

The \"other\" on slide 27, for example, is basically code for rent-seeking behaviors and we can all agree that is an unfair source of income and so we should work towards reducing rent-seeking (corporate welfare and so forth). Technological change, on the other hand, is very fair and largely responsible for the gains in living standards shared, albeit unequally, by all.

Another factor that seems to have been missed by almost everyone in this literature is the death of proprietorship, of people of all income levels owning their own businesses. It is still alive and well in South Dakota, even outside of agriculture, and largely explains South Dakota\'s low Gini, which is as low as some Western European nations. But in much of the country, people have become mere employees, subjecting themselves to various rigidities. It will be interesting to see if the Giggers will continue as \"captured\" independent contractors or move toward proprietorship. Finally, I realize this is a draft but constructions like this have to go: \"Variation in inequality in a country comes from a variety of different sources.\" \"Between 1992 and 2014, the average income of the 400 highest income 400 households increased by 310%,* so it was four times larger in 2014 than in 1992 â?? in real terms.\" *Slide says 410% btw