Romney economic adviser says the poor have it just fine, because they have microwave ovens

They're still trying. (DonkeyHotey)
  I don't even know where to begin with these people. The premise of this Wall Street Journal column by Romney economic adviser Kevin Hassett (dubbed by some naughty wags as the "world's worst economist," and for a host of pretty damn good reasons) and his partner in crime is that the common refrain of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer these last decades is "wrong," because just look at all the nice microwaves and cell phones the poor have these days. Yes, we have heard that case being made before'one cannot truly be poor if one has ever owned a microwave oven, because once you can afford a microwave oven you will always, from that point forward, have enough money to eat and house yourself and never lose your job or get sick or need medicine or have some gargantuan money whore eat your pension just because they can, so screw you.

This particular effort is especially notable for its slapstick conclusion, but we have to wait for that. The rest is too good to pass up. Selected quotes:

In the mid-19th century, socialists of various stripes asserted that capitalists grow richer while exploiting workers, who grow poorer. Today we hear that the gains from economic growth accrue to the highest-income earners while the standard of living of the poor and middle America stagnates and the gap between the richest and the poorest grows ever wider. That portrait of the country is wrong.

I'm going to just leave it to your imagination why an out-of-the-blue reference to mid-1800s socialism found its way into a column about how workers these days have it just fine, thank you very much. If you hear the faint sound of ringing in your ears, you're on the right track. Anyway, after acknowledging that yes, all those studies on income inequality do exist and do show rising income inequality, those can be dismissed because:

(Continued after the fold.)