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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Great Regression (2nd nomination)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge‎ to Great Divergence (inequality). I see rough consensus against keeping the page as a standalone article, and some support for a merger as an ATD. Views are split between this target and Causes of income inequality in the United States, but since both proposed targets are now being discussed for a merger between them, it makes more sense for a decision about the ultimate merge target be left for a discussion on the target's Talk page rather than on this AfD. Owen× ☎ 19:40, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great Regression

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Great Regression (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Transparently political, wildly incorrect (wages have increased substantially since 1981). Lacks notability and appears to be a neologism. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nom is however correct on it being a neologism. If it survives AfD, I'll propose renaming to either Great Regression (Robert Reich) or Stagnating real wages for lower earning workers in the advanced economies since 1981 (Checking on google scholar, the vast majority of recent uses of "Great regression" are in completely different senses to that used by good professor Reich.) Being 'transparently political' is not a valid reason for deletion. I'd be inclined to accept it as an IAR reason if the article would be likely to increase US polarisation - but the phenomena reflects almost equally badly on both parties (Many would say worse on the Reps in the 20th century, but quite a few have argued the Dems have been more to blame in recent years, and there are global economic forces in play that neither party can easilly fully mitigate.) PS - I tweaked the wording to make clear the article if refering to real wages - thanks Nom for pointing out it could have been read as "wildly incorrect". FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I say wildly incorrect, I mean every sentence in the article is rejected by the consensus of mainstream economists and is not supported by the actual data. Real median wages are up substantially from 1980 (and more precise metrics, like median household income per head-equivalent after adjusting by PCEPI, have increased much faster). A framing that "reflects badly (or well) on both parties" is still an explicitly political framing, and in fact that's my main complaint here—the article is just uncritically repeating Robert Reich's populist talking points, despite wages, compensation, and consumption figures all disagreeing with him. If the article is kept, it should be retitled something like "Great Regression myth" and be devoted to explaining how this thesis has been thoroughly rejected by the consensus of mainstream economists. (Excluding parts like widening measures of relative inequality, where the field generally agrees that metrics like Gini are up, although there's some disagreement.) The consensus is that the period 1980-2015 was characterized by the poor getting richer at a slightly slower pace than the rich, a trend that reversed around 2015. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Only tangentially related, but if you want to understand American political trends since 1980, the most enlightening articles for me have been Center squeeze and McGovern-Fraser commission—this is pretty much exactly what social choice predicted would happen based on the changes we made to American political institutions.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining & for the tips on center squeeze etc. I can see you really know your stuff in this topic class! Sadly though, that's 100% incorrect on the mainstream consensus. When it comes to marshalling economic data, they don't come much more mainstream than Robert Reich. Just glance at the lede of his wikipage - even the conservative leaning Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers . Granted, some of his favoured policy responses are a little outside of consensus, at least in US economic circles, but his command of data is masterful. It's important to note Reich was talking about workers who both live in the advanced economies and are in the lower paid brackets (especially bottom decile).
Even at the end of the 20th century, there was relatively little quality empirical work that differentiated between the pay brackets at good resolution. But between about 2000 & 2005, trailblazing work led by Tony Atkinson along with the likes of Emmanuel Saez & Thomas Piketty yield abundant data on these trends. There's likely still a few 10th rate economists who don't even know about it - but no one try's to seriously dispute the data as the empirical evidence is unassailable. (Disputing their fave policy recommends is of course another matter.)
Turing to your rebuttals, there's not really much conflict between your Fed link & what Reich said about median earnings. (He said "stagnating" not declining). The Fed graph may appear to show they're "up substantially", but a skilled analyst would immediately see the graph has misleading qualities if used to support that sort of conclusion (e.g. choice of extrema for the Y-axis). Take a look at the |Reich's Great Regression infographic. Reasonable for Reich to say overall pay growth stagnated between 1980 - 2009 when it only totalled ~8% , compared with ~ 85% between 1947-79. And much of that rise is due to gains that overwhelmingly benefit those at the top. As is clear from the part of the infographic showing that pay for the bottom quintile rose by 122% in the 1947-79 period but actually fell by 4% for 1980 - 2009.
According to various datasets, you'd be right to say 1980-2015 was characterized by the poor getting richer at a slightly slower pace than the rich - but only from a global perspective rather than looking at the advanced economies. (Losses for the poor in Global North were more than offset by gains from the more numerous poor in Global South). Interestingly, believers in social choice & pubic choice type theories normally like to claim the trend didn't reverse until more like 2018, so they can blame the shift aware from free market liberalism after Trump & Brexit etc. (And the current revised World Bank, UN & IMF figures largely back that up, though they didn’t a few years back.) But as you mention 2015, here's a good source for showing that other mainstream economists saw the data in an almost identical way to Reich. Note fig 1.2 on page 9 which shows falling incomes for the entire bottom 90% in several advanced economies! Note the report was co led by Larry Summers himself, about as centrist a mainstreamer as they come. BTW, I met with Larry in London at the launch event for that report. Even back then, I was starting to think being an activist for socialist economics was not the best use of my talents, but I accepted the invitation as I was hoping one of the inclusive capitalists there could be talked into funding an Inclusionist version of Wikipedia, where folk like RAN, Anobody & Ikip could be installed as lifelong Arbs, and policy would be set so that no useful article would every be deleted. I did managed to have a ten minute chat with the biggest moneybags there ( Glenn Hutchins ) but sadly we got stuck on talking about the chances of implementing a generous universal basic income, and never got the chance to talk to him 1-to-1 again... Anyway, now I've hopefully clarified mainstream thinking for you, perhaps you might change your vote to keep so article can be saved? Or if you remain determined to delete, perhaps you could strike "wildly inaccurate"? This article was created the legendary RAN himself, a titanic contributor whose legacy we should not want to tarnish. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess are you interested in the general phenomenon or Reich's particular take on it. The general phenomenon is already covered in Causes of income inequality in the United States. And not clear if a few articles by Reich with no secondary responses or adoption of the term is worth its own article. Earlsofsandwich (talk) 04:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for reply, but that's incorrect. The phenomena Reich was writing about is global - not confined to the US. At the time Reich published the NYT piece, it was at least confined to the advanced economies. But from about 2015 it's became truly worldwide, as even the OP admits. For example, here's a source published just today about 29 Nigerian children facing execution for protesting against the cost of living crises (i.e. falling real income.) AFAIK, this is the only article we have on the global phenomena (in as much as it's distinct from economic inequality).
At least for Wikipedia purposes, it would wrong to assume I'm mainly interested in the general phenomena. Granted, when I became an editor back in 2008 it was indeed to promote the Keynesian resurgence, which I saw at the time as a fitting policy response. But that was before I knew about WP:RGW. I'm motivated here by respectable wiki reasons - saving work added by the great RAN. Admittedly, I added various sources to this article back in 2016. But that was just as the article was under attack in it's first AfD. In 2022, editor Avatar317 removed those sources, I didnt try to contest as they didn't remove any of RAN's original work. Huh, these days I'd not be inclined to write much about this topic even if it wasn't for WP:RGW. Sometimes problems have to be allowed to get worse before they can get better, and certain challenges are best tackled sideways. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:57, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting. Lots of discussion but we need more editor participation and evaluation of sources, not the article's content. If the article is poorly written, that can be improved editorially, this is a discussion of whether the article subject has independent notability as verified by reliable sources, regardless of editor's opinion of the subject.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 03:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great Divergence (inequality) is the better of the two targets as at least it recognises the phenomena has a global aspect rather than being all about US. Otherwise not a bad shout. The concepts are different - this article is largely about flatlining or falling living standards for those not at the top, which is a different thing to inequality. In the early 21st century, folk often had quite different attitudes to the two phenomena. Immiseration of the poorest was seen as a big problem, while rising inequality was not. E.g. After Atkinson et la revealed the problem New Labour put much energy in to trying to improve things for those at the bottom, while being intensely relaxed (Direct quote from Peter Mandelson ) about runaway earnings for those at the top. But starting about 2009, academics at least began looking at the two concepts together. From 2015 for example, various separate datasets were merged under the banner of World Inequality Database. There's a few who still argue for treating them separately - e.g. Pinker or Tyler Cowen , but they seem to be in the minority these days. If this closes as merge, then per requirement for attribution, I'd suggest content from here can be copied over with a an edit summary such as "adding content originally added by RAN". Then this article can be deleted, per the on point analyses from editor Sirfurboy. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:57, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I really meant "merge with" and not "merge to", because I don't necessarily think that the target is the best place for the content to reside at, but I do think the topic is clearly notable and there's some things that could be merged, even if I don't necessarily think that any of the existing titles would be the best one (and I tagged the other article {{merge}} instead {{merge from}} for that same reason). There could potentially be multiple merge targets, but naming just one would probably be easier for the closer, and it's not the role of AFD to precisely determine the final disposition of content. I don't think what to do about the redirect is really our problem either, if people really think it shouldn't be at this title, then it could be moved. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • DraftifyDelete: From the sources available this seems like nothing more than a not so newish neologism. From the sources available in the article that I can view the term is only used in passing or as the title and there is no great analysis of the concept as a thing in and of itself. Searching for the term results in similar with what sources that are available only mentioning the concept in passing. I'm not discounting that sources exist though which could be used to further demonstrate notability so I suggest draftification with the understanding that any movement to mainspace go through AFC. If notability hasn't been demonstrated by there being significant coverage in multiple reliable source after 13 years then this ought to be deleted. TarnishedPathtalk 09:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: It's clear that the term "Great Regression" isn't used often, and to the extent that it is used it has no generally accepted definition. Even in the sources from the article Reich uses it to refer to something that started in the 80s. Taylor for something that started in the 2010s. Earlsofsandwich (talk) 04:16, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and don't redirect. Per Alpha3031, there is an article, Causes of income inequality in the United States, and the proposed merge to Great Divergence (inequality) that covers the topic area of this article. A merge would be in order if there were stuff to merge, but what this article has is a few paragraphs predicated on a few newspaper articles that happen to use the term "great regression" and I don't think they add to the encyclopaedic value of the other articles. But the reason for opposing merge/redirect is primarily because, in searches, I find a primary topic for "the Great Regression" to be this book [1] which looks like it may itself be significant, as it has reviews such as [2]. The term seems to get used, at least currently, per that book, to refer to the regression we are seeing in democracies towards populism, the breakdown of the economic order [3] and such like. This is a different subject. If we redirect to articles about income inequality we will mask the primary topic. We should thus delete this page but note clearly that this in no way prejudices a recreation of the page with a different primary topic. That is, if someone can demonstrate that the book is notable, an article on the book could be recreated without prejudice. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:50, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The primary reason you point out is usually dealt with by WP:MADRENAME, afaik. I'm not sure we'd really need to dab for a page that doesn't even exist yet, but if there was, I'd really rather the decision be made by RFD since they're the people who'd be familiar with this kind of thing. Would have been easier if the title was "the Great Prosperity" instead since I think only Reich really used that, so we can redirect to the paragraph it has at Inequality for All (whereas the content can be merged wherever the article on the topic ends up) and not worry too much about any other topics people might be looking for. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:42, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for pointing me to WP:MADRENAME, which I had not considered. Based on this, I would be content with a rename and then merge. What about to The Great Regression (inequality)? That retains the term used in the three newspaper articles, disambiguates it, and doesn't obscure the potential book page. Typing the Great Regression into search would bring it up as an option. If that is acceptable, I'll move my !vote to merge. I'm not convinced about punting this to RfD. Whilst they are indeed capable there too, RfD gets less participation than AfD and if we have a consensus here, and a P&G way forward per MADRENAME, I think we can satisfactorily resolve it in one go. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:34, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd support that. Alpha3031 (t • c) 10:33, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Rename to The Great Regression (inequality) and then merge with Great Divergence (inequality) (first choice) although Causes of income inequality in the United States is acceptable too. Moving my !vote to merge per the above discussion and based on WP:MADRENAME. Merge, rather than redirect, as this is only viable if some content on this page, with some or all of the references, is preserved in the merge target, which would otherwise not mention it by this name. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:08, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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