To give a concrete example, confounding variables in the analysis can lead to things like Simpson's paradox. In the famous Berkeley gender bias case, the evidence based on facts was that men were accepted into graduate school at a higher rate than women. People concluded that there was institutional gender bias.

Further analysis shows that most departments had no strong bias against women, and some evidence that it was actually the other way around. The confounding factor is that women tended to apply to more selective programs.

The post by tokenadult, for a more concrete backing of PythonicAlpha's reply, observed 'Central and South America that have high Gini coefficients (that is the region on the world to look in for the worst income inequality, among regions of the world) have long had protectionist trade policies and remarkably little involvement in the world economy'. However, that is only one possible correlation.

Consider that US government and businesses have a long history of political and economic intervention in those countries, with Cuba being a prime example but see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Americas , the private army of the Cuyamel Fruit Company taking over Honduras, and US military support to Colombia in the so-called 'War on Drugs'. The US has a weaker influence in Europe.

Consider that most Central and South American countries are Catholic, while the European countries include more faith traditions. In the same vein, religion tends to be less important in the European countries than the countries in the Americas.

So there are several other differences which might affect the economical differences besides 'protectionist trade policies' and international economy involvement. Yet the provided link [1] is only a list, and does not have any sort of analysis to judge if there are confounding affects other than free trade. It is insufficient justification for the point made.

The provided link [2], as evidence for "Free trade improves income equality" doesn't actually make that statement. It does indeed say that "EFTA countries show decrease in income inequality" but "One explanation for this is income losses in the upper part of the income distribution that happened during the financial and economic crisis." That's quite a different point, don't you think?

Then if you read the actual study it says "Social transfers (excluding pensions) played an important role in reducing inequality in 2012"

There's nothing in that document which mentions free trade as improving income equality.

The provided link [3] looks like a nice document. Tokenadult suggests that it primarily suggests "improving provision of primary and secondary education". To point out though, that same document categorizes "Liberalising product markets" under the section "Growth-enhancing policy reforms that have an ambiguous effect on income inequality"

Finally, link [4]'s biggest suggestion is that "The US needs a more progressive and redistributive tax and transfer system to combat rising inequality in market incomes." I didn't see anything about globalization and free trade.

Hence why PythonicAlpha is fully justified in saying "This is just propaganda without any real facts."

Moreover, you might have noticed that tokenadult's "globalization" is limited to "free trade", and not "free movement of labor" or "freedom of workers to bargain collectively." By focusing only on capital and ignoring labor, this is propaganda favoring those who own capital over those who work. As a classic example, a law which forbids the purchase of goods made by child labor or slave labor is also a law which is anti-free trade.

The question I have for nostrademons and those who down voted PythonicAlpha is: did you actually follow and read those four footnotes, or was their presence enough for you? If you read them, then how did they persuade you that they strengthened tokenadult's comments?