Mason Gaffney wrote:  
  
"A weakness in some of the postings herein, thus far, has been casual  
empiricism run riot.  In a scatter of points you can always find pairs   
that, taken separately, run against the regression line derived from the   
whole scatter, and James has done that (so, perhaps, have some of his   
antagonists, but I just read James recently).  Miller looks at the whole   
data set in England."  
  
I'd like to refer Mason back to reading all of the posts on income   
inequality and growth to learn what he appears to me to be missing.  How   
can he tell the "weakness in some of the postings" when he says he just   
read mine [James's] recently?  Secondly, I was using data for the world   
published in Meier and Rauch, Leading Issues in Economic Development   
(2005) and World Development Report (2003) to argue my points.  I don't   
think "the whole data set in England" is a good substitute for the world   
data from the above two sources.  Thirdly, I have been a student of   
development economics and studied the data long enough, not to be unduly   
impressed by what an "Epidemiologist in high standing" writes in the   
Lancet.  Lastly, I think Mason will be more helpful to this discussion   
if he studied the data and offered a reasoned explanation or argument in   
support of his viewpoint than what he has so far done.  
  
James Ahiakpor