This seems kind of useless because of the different sizes of the categories. 0 to 50% in one lump? Top 10% not showing the difference between the 90th and 99th percentiles? How about just showing a graph. Yes there are lots of graphs in the article, but they all have the same issue. I mean put percentile on the X axis (0 to 100) and income or wealth or whatever on the Y axis. Maybe also give a slider letting people adjust the GINI coefficient and see how the money moves around as a result.
Top 10% not showing the difference between the 90th and 99th percentiles
Data on the very wealthy (finer than 10%) needs to be clicked.
0 to 50% in one lump
That is usual. The bottom 50% are lumped as “have no wealth”. Then the 40% middle class (wealth related to direct use, e.g. housing), 10% is wealthy (and historically and geographically stable around 10% since records are available). You’ll find that in most work studying wealth disparity. Saez and Zucman being the site are known scolars in the field.
I mean put percentile on the X axis (0 to 100) and income or wealth or whatever on the Y axis
If you do that you won’t see the widening gap as time advances, which is the point of the site.
Maybe also give a slider letting people adjust the GINI coefficient and see how the money moves around as a result.
The site presents real data from US, not a model on which you change inputs. Plus the gini really doesn’t capture well how the ultra wealthy peak from the rest.
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If the usual thing sufficed to inform people, well, it’s already out there, so there’s no point in doing yet another website. The new site should show something new. Also, 50%-40%-10% might be an observed pattern but is it fundamental? Who knows? I don’t study this topic but I’m used to the idea of a power law distribution so I’d like to see whether the relevant graphs look that way. Mostly though I’d like to see an axis that’s linear by percentile, to get a sense of how wealth is distrbuted across the population, rather than in arbitrary buckets of differing sizes.
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Use separate graphs or colored lines for different time periods.
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The slider is to let people look at counterfactual situations where the distribution was different (or became what it is) due to some (imagined) intervention in the past. If we say there’s no point to doing that, i.e. the data in the graphs is an unavoidable consequence of a “financial field theory” where dollar bills stick to other dollar bills and end up concentrating in a few places like charged particles, then why is either economics or history even interesting? I’d certainly want to see what happens if you can move a slider, but of course that’s just me.
That said, if gini doesn’t capture the top peak (I gather gini is a different parametrization of a power law curve, though I haven’t gotten around to checking into that) then I wonder if there’s some simple model that better fits reality. And again I’d still want a slider, because I don’t know what else to do with the info in the graphs.
- ~10% wealthy is stable. Middle class existing is recent. Who knows: pretty well explained in Piketty’s capital and ideology (there are interviews on youtube summarizing the book if you want details.) Basically it’s more or less stable, and the given reason for it differs with each society, so it is a social choice.
The rest is mostly you having issues reading the graphs and wanting them to show something else than what their purpose is.
Edit:
Searched but couldn’t find a simple overview of why a single parameter analysis like the gini fails. It is mostly a debate amongst scholars (so harder to read), which led to the whole we are the 99% movement when Piketty first raised the idea to the general public.
Easiest to understand I found was this, showing 2 very different model societies with the same gini, but the blog goes further with an analysis in don’t really find useful of adequate other than this graph.
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