But we've also done a horrible job of combating wealth inequality. The top 1% get 30%, the top 20% get 80%... blah blah, you should have voted for Bernie.
So yeah, hooray... when you describe "extreme poverty" as like $1.90 a day the chart looks pretty good. Now... what if you were to define it as like making less than $10k / year... still feel warm and fuzzy?
> But we've also done a horrible job of combating wealth inequality. The top 1% get 30%, the top 20% get 80%... blah blah, you should have voted for Bernie.
What percent should the top 1% have? Same for the top 20%, and so on.
Note that unless every individual has exactly the same wealth, it is mathematically necessary that the top N% has more than N% of the wealth.
Note also that this applies within wealth groups, too, so that if the top N% has M% of the wealth, then the top, say, 10% of that N% would be expected to have more than 10% of that M%.
It doesn't take a lot of unequal distribution in the subgroups to get an overall distribution with the top 1% having 30%. All that takes is that the top 50% in each group have 83.4% of the group's wealth. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable distribution to me.
With that distribution, then overall the top 50% have 83.4%. The top 50% of the top 50% have 83.4% of 83.4%, so we have the top 25% overall has 69.6%. Applying 50/83.4 to that group, we get overall the top 12.5% has 58.1%. Do this a total of 6.64 times, and you get the top 1% with 30%.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 14.6 ms ] threadFeel good! https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
But we've also done a horrible job of combating wealth inequality. The top 1% get 30%, the top 20% get 80%... blah blah, you should have voted for Bernie.
Feel meh! http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5162e54469bedd0b220...
So yeah, hooray... when you describe "extreme poverty" as like $1.90 a day the chart looks pretty good. Now... what if you were to define it as like making less than $10k / year... still feel warm and fuzzy?
What percent should the top 1% have? Same for the top 20%, and so on.
Note that unless every individual has exactly the same wealth, it is mathematically necessary that the top N% has more than N% of the wealth.
Note also that this applies within wealth groups, too, so that if the top N% has M% of the wealth, then the top, say, 10% of that N% would be expected to have more than 10% of that M%.
It doesn't take a lot of unequal distribution in the subgroups to get an overall distribution with the top 1% having 30%. All that takes is that the top 50% in each group have 83.4% of the group's wealth. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable distribution to me.
With that distribution, then overall the top 50% have 83.4%. The top 50% of the top 50% have 83.4% of 83.4%, so we have the top 25% overall has 69.6%. Applying 50/83.4 to that group, we get overall the top 12.5% has 58.1%. Do this a total of 6.64 times, and you get the top 1% with 30%.
You do well, you live well... your kids live well... but it stops being capitalism when people don't have to try due to inheritance.