Quote:
Originally Posted by ba1025
I don't think i was arguing against mobility. my point was the gap between high earners and the avg American
|
But mobility is an important factor to consider. Since you either don't understand my question or don't want to answer it, I'll go ahead.
Ten years ago, LeBron James was growing up in a poor household. Today, he is worth hundreds of millions and has a stated goal of becoming the first billionaire in basetball.
When we look at the median, as one person swimming against 300,000,000, by crossing over from the bottom quintile to way up in the top quintile of wealth, he moves the median income by an infintesimally small number. However, his wealth creation doesn't destroy other's wealth (people volunteer to see his on-court exploits and to purchase his endorsed products).
He has a small impact on the mean wealth (probably around $1-2, since his hundreds of millions of wealth is against a population of 300,000,000). However, his impact on mean wealth is huge by orders of magnitude when compared to his impact on median wealth.
Bringing this back to income inequality, these statistics are generally used to argue that the rich are simply getting richer and that the poor are being left behind. LeBron provides a case of a poor person becoming a very rich person. I doubt that you'd see many people upset by his large wealth. Instead, he's more likely to be touted as living the American Dream, a poor person who made it big and inspires others to dream big.
When you hear his story, it can be an inspiration and an illustration of one path of the American Dream. When presented as a faceless static statistic (which is what income equality is), it becomes what is wrong with America.
Now, there are certainly rich that are getting richer, but we know from past studies that 4 out of every 5 millionaires is self-made, and so we shouldn't allow superficial analysis of statistics to tell the wrong story. The average story then in the upper income/wealth brackets is that the poor are becoming rich.