re #13 - mixedmedia, you're right, but that's a measurement problem. I suspect that if you factored that in, the overall numbers would change somewhat, but the overall thesis that consumption disparities are less than income disparities would persist. As I said in the OP, I'm not sure that consumption is the relevant measure of economic well-being as distinct from income, and I'm not sure that income is either. It all depends on what we're really trying to evaluate: what kinds of disparities should we care about, and why. We can't sensibly answer the question of what (if anything) to do about disparities until we figure out why they are important.
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