

Top 1% take biggest income slice on record - reillyse
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/10/pay-gap-richest-poorest/2793343/

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clarkmoody
Income inequality is not the disease. It's a symptom of other issues.

A better indicator of economic health is to look at changes in the individuals
with highest net worth. In countries with government-granted monopolies, the
list remains relatively constant year upon year. In more competitive
countries, the list churns new wealth in with the old.

I do wish we could get over this "1% vs 99%" meme though. Incomes are mostly
continuous as you go up the scale. The change in annual income / net worth of
the bottom guy in "the 1%" and the top guy in the "the 99%" is immaterial.

If the article is warning us that we're on the brink of a Depression,
mentioning the 1927 stats, I would like to see some sort of charts showing
this 1% slice over time[1].

And for "the rest of us," it isn't the fault of "the 1%" that median incomes
haven't matched productivity gains over the last 40 years[2]. This is where
more scholarly work should be focused, in my opinion. Basically, it doesn't
matter how much wealth the top earners have, as long as the median income is
growing. The headline and article are simply engendering class warfare instead
of examining the deeper causes of median income stagnation.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2008_Top1percentUSA.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2008_Top1percentUSA.png)

[2]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productiv...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png)

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fewy
clarkmoody,

You seem to miss the point that this is a zero sum game, you only have 100% of
the pie to go around. If the top 1% take more of it, it means the other 99%
get less. So it does in fact matter how much the top earners make because it
will lower the median income if they take more money.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

~~~
ohazi
No, it isn't. _Rent seeking_ is a zero sum game, but the productivity gains
over the last 40 years have increased the size of the pie.

~~~
fewy
The pie we are looking at is in percent, the article stated that the top 1%
took a bigger share of it than before. This means they took a bigger share of
your productivity gains. But why argue about such things, it would be easier
if you can show me a mathematical example where the top 1% take a bigger
percentage of the pie yet the median increases. Let me know if you like the
results you come up with.

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tenpoundhammer
At this state in our economy, those with the most resources have the best
chance to get even more resources with little to no effort. Assuming they wish
to do so.

We could easily squash this by reducing investment activities that don't
generate economic value, including certain types of stock trading,
derivatives, most kinds of futures trading, and by forcing more fair lending
practices(which lending does generate positive economic value, but can be a
long term binder of the poor).

I'm not sure there won't be unintended consequences by implementing
regulations in this area. But it would help to flatten the income inequality
curve while also lowering prices and increasing stability of common goods like
oil, corn, and whatever else people are betting in the futures markets.

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tzs
These kind of stories annoy me, because none of them ever give me enough
information to understand the significance of their numbers.

In any wealth distribution other than everyone having the exact same wealth,
it is mathematically necessary that the top X% have more than X% of the
wealth. The same observation applies within wealth groups, so for example the
top 25% of the middle third wealth group must have more than 25% of that
group's wealth unless everyone in that group has exactly the same wealth.

When you apply this recursively, things accumulate at the top and and the
bottom end. For instance, if within each wealth group the top 50% has 60%
(which seems to me likely to be flatter than reality), then for the whole
group the top 1% would have 5.6% of the wealth. If the top 50% of each group
has 75% of that group's wealth, then the top 1% of the whole group would have
19.7% of the overall wealth.

Given this, I have no idea whatsoever whether I should react to this kind of
article with outrage or indifference.

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fewy
This is pretty good math work. Take a look at the actual data below.

Shares of Household Income by Quintile, 2011

Quintile Share Lowest quintile 3.2 Second quintile 8.4 Third quintile 14.3
Fourth quintile 23.0 Highest quintile 51.1

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eliben
All drama and no interesting data. They could at least quote some numbers
(what's the 1% income, what's the median income, etc), graphs of historic
trends, breakdowns by state or whatever. Otherwise it's just an extended
headline.

