World population living in extreme poverty, 1820-2015 (opens in new tab)

> But we've also done a horrible job of combating wealth inequality. The top 1% get 30%, the top 20% get 80%... blah blah, you should have voted for Bernie.

What percent should the top 1% have? Same for the top 20%, and so on.

Note that unless every individual has exactly the same wealth, it is mathematically necessary that the top N% has more than N% of the wealth.

Note also that this applies within wealth groups, too, so that if the top N% has M% of the wealth, then the top, say, 10% of that N% would be expected to have more than 10% of that M%.

It doesn't take a lot of unequal distribution in the subgroups to get an overall distribution with the top 1% having 30%. All that takes is that the top 50% in each group have 83.4% of the group's wealth. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable distribution to me.

With that distribution, then overall the top 50% have 83.4%. The top 50% of the top 50% have 83.4% of 83.4%, so we have the top 25% overall has 69.6%. Applying 50/83.4 to that group, we get overall the top 12.5% has 58.1%. Do this a total of 6.64 times, and you get the top 1% with 30%.