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Comment by Frogolocalypse | Hacker News Reader

It's probably no surprise that the same people that think hard work is what leads to success are the same people that don't understand what the wealth distribution actually looks like in america.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wealth_Inequality_in_Amer...

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Well, the ideal would be very strange though. Top 20% owns only twice as much as bottom 20%? That would mean that the upper class - doctors, lawyers would earn only twice more than garbage men. That probably wasn't true even in Soviet Union

EDIT: played with it a bit and produced this chart - Y axis has the base of the exponential (top 20% earns n-times more than bottom 20%). It seems that what US has is not exponential though - I can't get the bottom 40% to be as small without the top 20% becoming too big. I think that means that it's subexponential

http://i.imgur.com/gHxBXwa.png

EDIT 2: This is actually about wealth inequality rather than income inequality. So it makes sense for that to be much larger. Here is the paper it's based on

http://www.nber.org/papers/w18559.pdf

No, it doesn't say that. The words in the video literally say in the 'ideal' income distribution that almost all people chose, "the rich folks are earning about 10 to 20 times as much as the poor folks"

> Top 20% owns only twice as much as bottom 20%? That would mean that the upper class - doctors, lawyers would earn only twice more than garbage men. That probably wasn't true even in Soviet Union

It's true in Sweden

Doctor: http://www.lonestatistik.se/loner.asp/yrke/Lakare-1234

Attorney: http://www.lonestatistik.se/loner.asp/yrke/Advokat-1066

Sanitation worker http://www.lonestatistik.se/loner.asp/yrke/Renhallningsarbet...

Recycling worker http://www.lonestatistik.se/loner.asp/yrke/Atervinningsarbet...

Probably related is that higher education is free (and you get a stipend and very cheap loans for living expenses) so doctors don't end up with hundreds of thousands in loans, and that doctors are in the public sector and not private.

And why the hell should I be making more than twice what a fulltime garbage man does? He's objectively providing a more important service and delivering more real physical value than I do.

Well said, I completely agree. Also his job is arguably "harder": has to get up super early, physically exhausting, smells bad all the time, etc.

That was quite enlightening, thanks. I was vaguely aware it's not good, but this video put it into perspective.

Hard work is only option.

"having rich parents" is a personal condition... you cannot choose condition, universe does not work like that - and every second we discuss income inequality is a wasted second. Thus we end up with hard work option

It's probably going to take a little while for people, if they haven't seen it before, to digest the information in the link I provided. If you aren't aware of how skewed wealth distribution in the US is, when you do realize, it always comes as a shock.

> "having rich parents" is a personal condition... you cannot choose condition, universe does not work like that - and every second we discuss income inequality is a wasted second. Thus we end up with hard work option

Non-sequitor.

Having rich parents can't be chosen: true.

Having rich parents (almost) be the only factor for success can be chosen, through economic policy.

There is absolutely no reason to ignore income inequality. Other than if you're one of the (extremely) few benefiting from it.

Is there a fix?

Democracy?

Doesn't work so far. Technology looks like a better answer: get a cheap laptop and bootstrap new google from home

This overlooks the fact that policies and attitudes can greatly effect how large the difficulties are that poor people must overcome. Which is why it's really important to discuss the matter.

The actual distribution looks exactly like the 80/20 rule. So even though that may not be ideal, it is definitely not shocking or unexpected.

No. It doesn't. More like a 60/1 rule. Or a 40/0.1 rule.

It's far from the 80/20 rule. The richest 1% has 40% of the wealth. The poorest 80% has 7 percent of wealth.

The 80/20 rule also says that 20% of the top 20% has 80% of the 80% of the total wealth. If you apply it three times, you get (0.2)^3 = 0.8% of the population has (0.8)^3 = 0.51% of the wealth. Which is even worse than what you see in the graph.

Also, your 7% number is wrong, from the graph it seems the poorest 80% has about 16%, which is less than the one predicted by 80/20, but not by much.

Again, I am not saying this is fair. The Pareto principle doesn't say this is healthy for a society, only that it is common.

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