David Brooks and the "statistical byproduct" of inequality

Last Thursday's David Brooks column is a classic of the genre: moderate in rhetoric, conventionally conservative in substance, a presenting interest in policy behind which lurks a fixation on politics and the grail of bipartisanship.

The column's thesis is that while income inequality may be a problem, it's not really helpful to talk about it as such, cause it's complicated. Brooks makes his argument in four points, and for the first three I'll just link to Dean Baker's learned and snappy analysis. (In response to Brooks trying to separate the issue of the superrich and their wildly superrich superrichness from the lack of mobility for others: "Fans of arithmetic everywhere know that if the rich get more, and the economy is not growing faster, then everyone else gets less.")

It's in point #4 that Brooks really out-Brookses himself. There's so much here that I'll just comment inline (in parenthetical bold):