On: How Everyone Got the Top 1% Wrong

[paul_f]

This sounds like a typical power law distribution. Nothing really unusual or unexpected about that.

[cowsandmilk → paul_f]

the time series shows that the distribution has changed over time. It is this change in distribution that people are opposed to.

[lotharbot → cowsandmilk]

A lot of people are opposed to there being a distribution more extreme than their emotions tell them is reasonable.

Consider what most Americans say the "ideal" level of wealth inequality would be: http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ and http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

Now consider how much wealth inequality there would be in an excessively fair society: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equ...

Clearly, people are determining their "ideal" without doing the math. This makes it hard to take their opposition to "this change in distribution" seriously as well.

[jsun → cowsandmilk]

What this really shows is an increase in the frequency of 1-time events such as IPOs or sales. There is no value, one way or the other, in using cross-sectional data (this article) to describe longitudinal shifts (the rich get richer). It's just irrelevant.

[sp332 → paul_f]

It's not a power law. The problem here is that the top fraction are the only ones increasing their wealth. Everyone else is stuck.