| | Ted:
I used to be a real CSPAN geek.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/95468-1
This is one of my favorite economic talks of all time.
I have a VHS tape of it, I once bought from CSPAN.
(That was like a confession, I am clearly such a damn geek.)
But, this talk was exceptional, and even timely.
I recently re-watched it. The admissions by Dr. Tyson were extraordinary. As well as the arguments, especially for 'stimulus' and 'health care savings' and so on.
I especially liked the discussion at the end, where one of the Berkloids was whining about the "8 or 9 to 1 upper to lower quintile ratio of income in America..."
Note: in a perfectly uniform distribution of incomes, where there are exactly the same number of people earning every income level from 0 to MAX_INCOME, the 'average' of the lower quintile is 10% MAX_INCOME and the 'average' of the upper quintile is 90% MAX_INCOME, and the all important to social justice quintile ratio is exactly 9:1
Horrors--the tryanny of magnitude rears its socially injust head.
Top decimile to lowest decimile? A whopping 95/5, or 19:1!
Have you ever been able to figure out a single thing that you or I or anyone does primarily as a member of a quintile?
I can't think of a single thing. Not even 'pile onto one of five freight trains once a year, to be counted.'
All of that goes on in the fertile imaginations of some poor bastard at Census and his precious little Excel spreadsheet.
regards,
Fred
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