I just looked up Ivanchuk's rating history on the FIDE site. In the last fifteen years, Ivanchuk's highest rating was 2787, and he has not dropped below 2700 at all. That includes rating periods where he only played elite events.
Your argument regarding Ivanchuk doesn't hold water.
If he only played elite events and eliminated all Open tournies he would have broken 2800 too , I have little doubt of that . Carlsen lost to a GM under 2700 ( Saric ? ) in the Olympiad and then also drew with him in Tata . He really should avoid such players if he wants to break 2900 and remain #1 in rating . 
Speaking of chucky... I bet there are a lot of people on chess.com that believe Morpy could beat him.
Reb, that's where your argument and my reference to rapid chess meet.
Ivanchuk is +2800 in rapid chess after competing in an open event.
Or are you really arguing that Rapid and Blitz ratings are NOT bloated, only standard ratings are?
@Magik: I had my doubts, now I'm sure you are simply trolling, no more, nor less.
Rapid and blitz ratings ( FIDE ) are very new arent they ? I don't know enough about them to argue one way or another with them and I thought we had both been discussing classic/slow chess ratings all along .
Your choice of Ivanchuk is very interesting. He's one of the great erratic geniuses of our game. You claim that the reason he hasn't broken 2800 is due to a flaw in the ratings system. I claim he hasn't broken 2800 because he's too erratic. He loses rating points because he often forgets about competition in search of the best move. He's lost on time in good positions just because he couldn't make up his mind which winning continuation was best.
Ivanchuk hasn't broken 2800 because he is not consistent enough. Not because of some imagined flaw in the rating system. Didn't you see the Candidates' tournament?
Ofcourse I did . Why do you think so few top players play in big Opens if its not to protect their bloated ratings ? The olympiad is a good place to look for how the elite do against GMs under 2700 .... Of the top 10 in the world how many of them still play in Open events ? Nakamura did recently at Gibraltar and Topalov was there too , Ivanchuk probably plays more Opens than any other 2700+ player ?
Btw, here's a fun game from that tournament that brings together several different topics we've been discussing recently:
Have you considered the issue of money?
I am not sure, but I think I saw that Naka will play in the next Millionaires Open.
Yup. The Millionaires tournament ruins your argument:
https://millionairechess.com/registration-list-mc2
Elite players play in elite tournaments because they're... elite. They get guaranteed appearance fees and seeding into other elite events. Most open tournaments can't compete financially with that.
"Why do you think so few top players play in big Opens if its not to protect their bloated ratings ?"
Playing opens against "weakies" is a good way to increase the rating for top players, as for example Giri and Kramnik showed in Qatar where they gained lots of Elo without even winning the event. That top players still rarely play such events is of course because there's not much glory or money to gain from playing such events instead of playing the tougher top tournaments.
Elite players are treated much better in Europe than in the USA . I doubt all the GMs at the millionaires event had all their expenses paid and free entry .... this is much more common in Europe .
http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men
The top 100 list.
Where's the big gap between the guys who play in top events and the rest of the pack? Looks pretty smooth to me. More gaps between the absolute elite, but that seems normal. Seems like Reb's assessment is based on guesswork rather than anything concrete.
Also, anyone can cherry-pick events or players, single pieces of anecdotal evidence, but for every example like that someone can just throw back something contracting it. Broad unbiased statistics surely are the only thing that can lead anywhere and it only seems to lead to one conclusion...
Regan's analysis may not be perfect (some book moves were bound to have been included), but do you really believe that the fact that those engine statistics mirror the ratings so consistently is just co-incidence?
They would probably be rated in the late 1800s.
I'm sure Magnus Carlsen is a great player, but I'm also pretty sure that players are told to lose to him to make him seem invincible. I think what FIDE wants is to paint Magnus Carlsen as way above his rivals, and keep that image for the next 15 years. Politics has interferred with chess. We all know Anand was told to lose the match against Magnus.
Lasker, Morphy, or Steinitz wouldn't miss ...Nfxe4! with the idea of winning a pawn and exchanging off white's important darksquared bishop (potentially coordinates with a queen and cover darksquare weaknesses after retreating while currently giving some tactical pressure) here.
I'm sure Magnus Carlsen is a great player, but I'm also pretty sure that players are told to lose to him to make him seem invincible. I think what FIDE wants is to paint Magnus Carlsen as way above his rivals, and keep that image for the next 15 years. Politics has interferred with chess. We all know Anand was told to lose the match against Magnus.
I'm sure Magnus Carlsen is a great player, but I'm also pretty sure that players are told to lose to him to make him seem invincible. I think what FIDE wants is to paint Magnus Carlsen as way above his rivals, and keep that image for the next 15 years. Politics has interferred with chess. We all know Anand was told to lose the match against Magnus.
What?! Yeah FIDE is corrupt but I don't think anyone's throwing matches to him he's just simply the best. Fischer said the Karpov-Kasparov match was rigged and I don't believe him.
Reb, you are switching ground. You started off arguing about historical rating inflation, but now you bring in Ivanchuk and argue that today's ratings are bloated due to the fact that +2800s don't play U2400s very often.
No statistician agrees with your second point, not even Sonas.