I am quite surprised by the information provided by Mike.
The normal distribution that I would expect is a Pareto distribution, which
is a pretty good starting point for the % of donations by the % of church
members, the % sales of various meet products, or the allocation of wealth
in a society.
Pareto's Law suggests that 20% of the population has 80% of the wealth, and
that the remaining 80% of the population has 20% of the wealth. That would
mean that the 20% richest would be 16 times richer per person than the
remaining 80%.
I have found that Pareto's Law is a very good first guess for almost any
situation involving allocations. A subsidiary rule I use would say that the
poorest 20% of the society have only 2% of the wealth, which works out to
say that the richest 20% of the population would be 40 times richer than the
bottom 20%.
The figures in the article Mike cites seem terribly conservative and
actually quite nice. Makes me want to live in America. My guess is that they
are in error.
Alan Scharf
-------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 19:20:11 +0000
>From: Robert Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: (Fwd) Re: Income Disparities Are Close to Record Highs
>
>A local columnist here in Chicago reported the Census
>Bureau statistics along with other statistics and
>some commentary.
>
>Some of that is:
>
>1. "As a result, the United States which wrote the idea
> of equality into its Declaration of Independence, is
> now by far the most unequal society in the industrialized
> world. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor growing
> faster. Nowhere else is the cause not only rising wealth
> at the top but falling income at the bottom. And nowhere
> is the middle class shrinking as fast as in the country
> that once proclaimed itself a middle-class nation."
>
>2. 40% of all Americans own stocks - but 90% of all stocks
>are owned by 10% of the population.
>
>3. In the U.S. the richest 20% is 13 times richer than the
>poorest 20%. In France it is 6. In Japan it is 4.
>
>4. "The U.S. standard of living remains the world's
> highest- some 20% higher on average than that in
> Finland, the Netherlands or Italy. But the poorest
> Americans live at levels 20% below those of the poorest
> Finn, Dutch or Italian."
>
>5. The Organization for Economic Development found that
>economic mobility was about the same among the other
>developed nations - sinking the argument that in the
>U.S. there is a greater chance for a poor person to
>end up rich compared to the other developed nations.
>
>
>Robert Campbell
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
Alan Scharf, Futurist and President
Scharf and Associates Creative Leap International
1137 Elliott Street, Saskatoon, SK. Canada S7N 0V4
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 306/244-4164 Fax: 306/652-0633
