Income Inequality Stories are Generally Stupid and Devisive

Income inequality widens in all 50 states
A new report finds that lopsided income growth is happening across the nation, but the gap between the top earners and everyone else is substantially wider in several states. http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post–income-inequality-widens-in-all-50-states

These stories are stupid and divisive. Anybody with some statistics and math skills would know this is not the way to look at these numbers. The top 1% is a statistical outlier; basically Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the other 400 richest peoples income means nothing to the rest of us; they make a ton of money off of stock, interest, and other rich people income.

I think the biggest issue left out of these “stir the pot” articles is that there isn’t a fixed amount of money in the system. The rich can make all they want and the rest of us still have plenty of opportunity to make money. It’s not like they take a bunch and leave nothing for the rest.

Income distribution is a much more complicated issue than this article, or I, address. You can study this yourself and see that aside from stock option windfalls during the late-1990s, there is little evidence of a significant or sustained increase in the inequality of U.S. incomes, wages, consumption, or wealth over the past 20 years.

This article does a better job talking about it:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/01/02/the-five-biggest-myths-about-income-inequality/