CLOTHES OF THE BILLIONAIRE . . . If the billionaire David Koch were walking down the street, could you, at a glance, pick him out of a crowd by the way he was dressed? Don Boudreau, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, suggests not. Therein, he suggests on his blog (cafehayek.com), lies some of the illogic with the liberal fixation on income inequality.

” . . . Measures of inequality of incomes do indeed vastly overstate the inequality of material living standards. Nearly all Americans enjoy easy access to the likes of microwave ovens, cell phones, the Internet, and MP3 players, as well as, of course, to food, clothing, and shelter. So the differences separating the super-rich from ordinary folks are increasingly abstract and invisible. I’m told that, say, David Koch has billions more dollars in his bank account than I have in mine, but I never see his bank statements. The fact is, Mr. Koch is no better fed, clothed, or coiffed than I am. And when he walks down the street, Mr. Koch’s immense wealth does little to distinguish him from the many middle-class Americans who walk past him — all unaware that his portfolio is unusually hefty.”

The quote is from a letter Mr. Boudreau wrote to the editor of the Wall Street Journal about the comments on the wonderful piece by Arthur Brooks “Happiness and Inequality.”

* * *

AFTER MISSISSIPPI, SWEDEN . . . Mark J. Perry’s blog for economics and finance, known as Carpe Diem (mjperry.blogspot.com), put up yesterday the latest chapter in the saga of the discovery that were Sweden to separate from the European Union and join America, it would be the poorest state in the union. This seems to have started back in 2002 with a posting, at Techcentralstation.com, by Johan Norberg (johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=45). Professor Perry puts up a link to a blog called Political Calculations that suggests that the entire European Union would rank — when looking at GDP or GSP per capita — poorly in comparison with most American states.

* * *

SEARCHING FOR PROFESSOR FRIEDMAN . . . Greg Mankiw’s blog (gregmankiw.blogspot.com) will take you to a devastating dissection of Paul Krugman’s recent attack on Milton Friedman. The Krugman piece appeared in The New York Review of Books. The reply is by Edward Nelson of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Anna Schwartz, who collaborated with Friedman on “A Monetary History of the United States.” The text of their response is 29 pages and several pages of notes follow.

Their conclusion: “Paul Krugman is a respected trade theorist. But he does not speak authoritatively on subjects on which he has no expertise. Monetary economics is not his field of expertise. Krugman’s research background does not qualify him as an authority on Milton Friedman’s work. Krugman’s scholarly publications rarely mentioned Friedman and, when they did, they acknowledged the contributions of Friedman and monetarism in a way that contradicts his essay on Friedman. Friedman’s reputation is intact despite Krugman’s deplorable efforts to denigrate him and his contributions.”

* * *

INSTANT BEN . . . As in Ben Bernanke. The blog Argmax.com takes one to a site that, when the user clicks on an image of the Federal Reserve Board chairman, generates a “genuine fake” press release of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee. Comments Argmax.com‘s John Irons: “Somebody’s got too much time on their hands.” Wonder who.