The classic example is in a sales group. The top 20% of salesmen bring in 80% of the business.
In customer support, the top 20% of customers take up 80% of a company’s time.
According to this article, the total wealth in this country is 112 trillion. If you applied the 20/80 rule to this figure, and then keep applying the 20/80 rule until you have 1% remaining, then the “natural” outcome should be that the top 1% control over 70 trillion in wealth. That’s twice as high as what we actually have.
Not just people, but companies as well. For example, the top 10 largest publicly traded companies make up 30% of the total value of the S&P500.
Wealth inequality is the least surprising thing ever. But most people don't ever do math, so it makes for good clickbait.
Is it that we should simply ignore wealth inequality and the societal issues it generates?
Suppose on some other planet with a civilization that evolved from something other than monkeys the "rule" is 100/100, meaning everyone contributes equally.
On that planet I guess you'd be arguing that there's something wrong with the world considering that the Top% of Borg Households Hold 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50%, but everything is supposed to follow the "100/100 rule."
[1] https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/savings-advice/a...
There is certainly a problem with income inequality in the world, but it's hardly Elon Musk's fault that people that aren't making very much spend their money so poorly. There is a social stigma with appearing rich to your friends so you spend poorly...social media has made this so much worse in the last decade.
This problem extends to many different aspects of life...from taking out student loans to pay for a useless degree to letting people buy shitty food on food stamps. People could be doing a lot better for themselves, but it's rarely seen as a function of personal responsibility to do so (it's always society that has to change to help them).
If you need the lack of friction of a demand deposit account, you probably want it all in checking, and for actual savings where you don't need frictionless access, you probably want it invested somewhere with returns better than a savings account.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
There must be a similar chart for individuals somewhere.
Edit: Btw, in 2010, the bottom 50% owned the least share of wealth - only 0.4%. This is also when the Fed started to increase the M1 money supply at the rate never seen before.
Newspapers and media in general don't get read for their factual information, they get read/consumed for how they make you feel. This is excellent stuff - it makes rich people feel superior, poor people feel bad and people in the middle feel uneasy. Everyone gets an emotion from one headline, effective click generator this one!
Whether or not it's good for society longterm to have journalists publish 'your neighbour makes more money than you, your neighbour is better looking than you, your neighbour is smarter than you' is another matter. I think we all know the answer, and yet there isn't some benevolent billionaire who cares enough to fund his/her own media organization and ban this type of content on their platform.
Does it really matter if we instinctively attach a positive or negative bias to a piece of information?
Net worth over certain threshold is non sense imo , someone who own a company may be calculated was total company value net worth but probably have a quote normal life and his net worth is in the market\street creating jobs, plus having a 1m earning and 1m spending i could have net worth 0 , but i would me different from who have 300$ income year
An ultra rich doesn't abuse society until he spend his money for things useless to the society imho.. that's what should be tracked. How much wealth is wasted for a golden toilet .. not accumulated
Arguing for more wealth equality is not the same as saying "billionaires are monsters", but having a few people able to fund lobbying and influence political systems, simply because of their wealth, while a large part of the population are cut off from participating in the democratic process, because they do not have the resources for education and the stability to commit long-term to a cause, is in my opinion a death sentence to modern democracy
