TRC Emeritus Alan Reynolds' New Book

I don't know if Alan is still active one way or the other with TRC, but his new book is apparently out and it sounds like great stuff. Even though I've handed in my TRC retirement to blog with American Spectator, I'm just sentimental enough to plug Alan's work here at his (and my) old stomping ground. Here's what National Review's Rich Lowry had to say about it:

If you don’t yet believe that we live in a de facto caste system, just wait until the new Democratic economic populists take over Congress. They will rely on the usual myths to portray the American economy as an engine of inequity and dispossession, benefiting only the very rich.

In advance of this onslaught, Cato Institute scholar Alan Reynolds has written a new book, Income and Wealth, that explodes much of the downbeat conventional economic wisdom.

The key difference between the richest and poorest households, Reynolds finds, is simply work: “Most income in the top fifth of households is from two or more people working full time. Most income in the bottom fifth is from government transfer payments.” According to the Census Bureau, there are almost six times as many full-time workers in the top households as in the bottom, and 56.4 percent of the bottom households didn’t have anyone working at all in 2004.