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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

By comparison, the top 400 people in the US have 2.5% of the US's wealth (using Forbes's 2010 numbers of $1.37 trillion for the top 400 households, and the Federal Reserve Board's $54.9 trillion US net worth)

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This is an interesting presentation (and told in a powerful way) on the wealth distribution in USA: http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely...

This is a terrible website tricking me into liking it on facebook. Here's the video on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Sorry. I guess my social media button filter is tighter than yours, as I didn't see Like-buttons at all. On top, the introduction on UpWorthy, mentioning the authors reaction when watching the story unfold, added anticipation for watching it.

"All we need to do is wake up and realize that the reality is not what we think it is"

Somehow I don't think a sudden realization is going to make a whole lot of difference. To make any difference we're going to need a complete upheaval of the mechanism and culture of the country. And not just any one country. The entire global financial system is geared to support and further this kind of imbalance.

Here's a fun experiment: Graph what you think wealth distribution should be. Take the derivative to see what you think income should be. Take the derivative again to see what you think your raise should be.

Derivative with respect to what? Time, so we can get money/time as the output? Differentiating a population percentage -> wealth with respect to time doesn't sound particularly informative.

You're right, there's some hand waving. The point is that most people draw ridiculously flat graphs, and if you work backwards to find an income/savings rate that makes the wealth graph, it's not pretty.

The problem with this comparison is that choice of size of the wealthiest share of population (top 110, top 400, top one family, top 20%) greatly influences the outcome of comparison. Why won't we all just refer to good old Gini coefficient and call it a day.

According to the Gini, Russia has more income equality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

I can't imagine it being true though given this story, my experiences traveling across Siberia, and those of my roommate who is from Russia (he's been in the US for six years). You pretty much have to be a one percenter to get potable tap water (every restaurant charges for water because it's always bottled, never tap).

Most people here don't buy bottled water because they don't have a car and/or don't care about water quality and/or don't think bottled water is superior. People use filters to filter tap water or just boil it.

Serving tap water in restaurants doesn't sound right to me. First of all, pipes might be rusty.

So… bottled water is superior? I thought it's essentially filtered tap water…

It all depends on the quality of tap water - there are locations where tap water is pretty much the same as bottled water, and there are locations where tap water isn't considered drinkable unless boiled beforehand.

Bottled water quality is predictable, your next restaurant's plumbing condition is not.

I don't like branded bottled water but at least you know what you get.

You are not supposed to drink water off the tap (well, actually you can, if you don't value your kidneys in the long run), you are supposed to filter it through $40 device or boil it, then you can drink it. That's something that everyone does, I don't see this problem, like, at all. I dunno why restaurants charge for water, maybe because they can.

> The problem with this comparison is that choice of size of the wealthiest share of population (top 110, top 400)

I found it fitting because it's pretty close to the same percentage of total population in either case (1 in a million)

> Why won't we all just refer to good old Gini coefficient and call it a day.

Although you can use Gini for wealth, the "usual" Gini coefficient is income.

Well, that's correct; Nevertheless, I think people should have been reminded that Gini coefficient exists someplace ITT.

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