Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 19:04:13 +0000 (GMT) From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> To: Frank Pawlak <fpawlak@execpc.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lifestyles of the rich and shameless (no longer US Immigration) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980618184937.767C-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <980619005955.ZM16456@darkstar.connect.com>
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On Fri, 19 Jun 1998, Frank Pawlak wrote: >In any country where 20% of the population owns 80% of the nation's wealth >there is a problem. That is exactly the case here in the USA. I read an editorial by a fellow who was commenting on a book (The Millionaire Next Door) that had a stat that I can't really remember but the point was there are few people with a net worth of one million dollars than you might think. (3.5% I think) Think of how rare billionares are in light of that 3.5% number. So the rest of us 96.5 percent aren't millionares. But the huge chunk of those people aren't impoverished either. If you can recall your gaussian distribution, three standard deviations from the norm encompasses 99% of the distribution. So when people tell me that America is becoming highly polarized in terms of wealth I have to agree that the richest are richer, BUT, there is a _tremendous_ portion of the population in between. Perhaps the reporting of the difference between rich and poor is disproportianate to the actual situation. Catchya Later, | UW Mechanical Engineering Jason Wells | http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jcwells/ | 206-633-5994 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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