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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. The distributions looks reasonable until ~2008, when things go wonky. That coincides quite nicely with the bottom of the equities market and the subsequent bull run.

Also, something seems off. The animated chart is not data for a given year, it's for the last 34 year ending in that year. Since you're averaging growth over 34 years, the only way the top percentile can go from 3% growth (over 34 years) to 5% is if you average in really huge growth.

Also, the 34 year measurement makes me suspicious. Seems like an odd time period to capture. Maybe if you made it 30 or 40 years the data isn't quite so compelling?

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Income inequality has been a visible problem for more than 10 years.

Income Progress across the American Income Distribution, 2000-2005 (https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/income-progress-across...)

"Finally, incomes are growing less equal. Over the past quarter century Americans at the top of the income distribution have seen much faster income growth than people in the middle class. If average income grows 1% a year and top earners enjoy gains of 2% a year, many people in the middle and bottom will see their incomes grow much more slowly than 1% a year. Top income earners experienced sharp income declines in the last recession, but in the last couple of years their incomes have rebounded strongly. This reinforces the impression that the gains from prosperity have flowed disproportionately to people at the top rather than in the middle of the distribution."

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html)

"Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.'

From the article:

> (The economists used 34-year windows to stay consistent with their original chart, which covered 1980 through 2014.)

I think it's more likely that 34 years were chosen because 1980 - 34 = 1946 makes sense for a post-WW2 analysis. The graph doesn't vary wildly for most of the time (most of the change is a fairly smooth motion), so it seems unlikely that 30 or 40 years would change the conclusion.

Note that a sharp rise in the curve can also be explained by bad years dropping out of the 34-year window. This would probably explain the increases in the 1%'s weath around 1992 and 2003 (1958 and 1969-70 recessions, respectively). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

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