Yes, yes, we know, think tankers arguing with a Nobel Laureate - but cats may look at Kings all the same.

This does not impress:

Many economists, especially on the right, argue that inequality is nothing to worry about. Why? Look at the Gini coefficient, they say. While it is true that this headline inequality measure rose quite quickly in Britain when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, it has actually been pretty flat or even falling for 30 years. The US, they acknowledge, is a good deal more unequal than Britain, but even there the Gini has hardly moved since the financial crisis, and so—these economists say—it can hardly be blamed for the arrival of President Trump.

All of that is true. And so there is the insistence that we should look at other methods of measuring inequality. Which does, to us, smack rather a little too much of the numbers don’t show what is convenient for the argument so let’s use some others.

This is worse:

It is flexible, too. It can be applied not only to income—about 0.35 for Britain, and about 0.47 for the US

The British number is the post tax and post benefits number. The American the pre-, for the US number is usually calculated before the effect of the tax system and before the vast majority of the welfare - including only direct cash transfers, not goods and services in kind or via said tax system. Which is how most American poverty and income inequality is alleviated, through the tax system and in kind.

Perhaps inequality is the great problem of our times, possibly it should even be measured by another number than the Gini. But we do think we’d all be aided by very senior economists indeed at least using righteously comparable numbers. Which isn’t what is being done here.

Tsk.