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Ken Shirriff

I made a histogram of wealth distribution in the United States, using the Forbes 400 list that just came out. Almost the entire US population is in the red line at the left, one pixel wide. To fit Elon Musk on the graph, each pixel is $500 million wide. In other words, from the perspective of the very rich, $0 and $500 million look the same.

A graph of wealth distribution in the United States on a linear scale. It consists of a thin red bar at the left with almost the entire US population. The rest of the graph is flat, continuing to the right with various billionaires and Elon Musk at $244 billion.
50 comments
bitsavers.org

@kenshirriff

so going back to your 2013 post, median income was 100K and no one was richer than 70b

today median income is 190K and TWELVE people are over 100 BILLION

something is VERY VERY wrong

fabos 🏳️‍🌈

Thanks @kenshirriff, this is a very interesting blog post to read!

slash

@kenshirriff Came here to post this link. I'll just boost instead.

1A

@kenshirriff might be good to also show a graph with log scale

Simplicator

@kenshirriff I’m looking for data to make another histogram: Wealth of Americans by percentile. Any recs on source data for this?

Think I’ll have to make it 10,000 columns (~34K people per bucket) to balance betw properly capturing that top bucket & having too many buckets to visualize.

Ken Shirriff

@Simplicator The Survey of Consumer Finances probably has the net worth data you want, but I can't figure out how to get it on their website: federalreserve.gov/econres/scf

Rich Stein (he/him)

@kenshirriff
Now add trends over time, incl. projections: "Top tech billionaires are on track to become the first trillionaires" euronews.com/next/2024/10/10/t v @euronews (Easy to project income for the other 3xx billion +/- assorted riffraff.)

Who Cares?

@kenshirriff this proves that is more worth taxing the poor

KevinFlynn :verified:

@kenshirriff
So there's about 2500 people holding the world hostage

SubductionRheology

@kenshirriff Other than the Kochs and the Waltons everyone whose name is on your list grew up middle or upper middle class, not top 1%. Four of the fourteen are US immigrants. Maybe the America IS the land of opportunity? Or maybe wealth is just luck, like if 350 million go to the casino 14 will have large winnings.

nachtet

@kenshirriff

Is that why TFG thinks he's "one of the working people, fighting the elites"? 😅

Nicole Parsons

@kenshirriff

After #KochNetwork bought the Citizens United decision, it means that Musk (and his investors) decide if those 350 million people get to live in an oligarchy or a democracy.

In Musk's view, his vote is the only one that matters.

thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4

Joe

@kenshirriff I suppose the wealth axis could be logarithmic, so it's the same distance between 100k, 1m, 10m, 100m, 1b, 10b, 100b. There would still be a big clump at the low end because a lot of people have zero or negative net worth.

Sam Van Horne, Ph.D.

@kenshirriff @c_9 “severely skewed”does not do this justice

Steve Popovich

@kenshirriff quite a histogram. It appears that wealth is far from normally distributed.

Seb

@kenshirriff Got to feel for those poor 1500 people over 500m but under 1b. The pressure on them to join the elite is intense.

Toadofsky

@kenshirriff Could we also have a graph where the x-axis is log(wealth)?

Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@kenshirriff

An illustrated guide as to why billionaires don’t think like you, act like you, have literally anything in common with any of us.

This much wealth (and power) in so few hands is inherently corrosive to individuals and society.

#TaxTheRich

xs4me2

@kenshirriff

No man should be able to achieve this amount of money. It is a perversion.

jjj

@kenshirriff Very interesting graph that of course raises more questions. :) I am glad you didn’t use a logarithmic scale. Do you have the data to easily create a similar graph zooming in on the 0-500 million pixel to the full width of the graph? Again, not logarithmic?

Jos

@kenshirriff

They can't help it. Money makes money.
Bill Gates, philanthropist, had a net worth of 53b when he stopped working for Microsoft in 2008 and somehow acquired another 70b, while trying very hard to donate his money to charity. Poor guy.

Dustin

@kenshirriff the amount of money some people have falls into a category I call "stupid rich”, in that it is so much money it is conceivably impossible to comprehend and I feel very stupid thinking of a number that large.

Scott Miller 🇺🇦 🇺🇸

@kenshirriff While I am a person who values my privacy, I would confirm that my net assets are between $0 and $499,999,999.99. Probably also true for my friends, family, and co-workers. 😜

Yrjänä Rankka 🌻

@kenshirriff ahh ’murrica, where there are no poor people - only temporarily embarrassed (m|b)illionaires. 😂

Evelyn, who Just. Can't. Even.

@kenshirriff So, what you’re telling me, is that these are the 2,310 people who run the US government.

DELETED

@kenshirriff Thank you for this. This is what I mean when I try to tell people that the uber-rich are truly in a world of their own.

Forbearance

@kenshirriff as a professional histogram looker, this is a bad histogram to have

MeaTLoTioN

@kenshirriff I can't imagine what being worth $1m would be like, heck, I can't imagine what being worth $100k would be like - that's so far beyond my reach.

ktp_programming

@kenshirriff I often explain that the problem is not the 10% rich not even the 1%. The 0.1% if not the 0.01%.

In the US millionaires are part of the 99%.

jkb770

@kenshirriff you forgot to add CuriousMarc‘s wealth after selling all his Lab Equipment 😂

DB Krupp

@kenshirriff apologies if this has already come up, but you might appreciate this (slightly older) visualization mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-w

DB Krupp

@kenshirriff fantastic, thanks! I’m glad to see more of these. A few weeks ago, I had my intro to quant class explore the one I posted, but I might use the Musk one next time

Son of a Sailor

@kenshirriff An eye-opening chart. (One note: Buffett should have two t's.)

Markus Redeker

@kenshirriff I cannot say how absurd this is. There are a bit more than 800 people who are actually represented in this diagram: The rest is “too poor” to be represented — even if they own (almost) a billion Dollars.

If you own less than a billion, we cannot care for you... — I am sure this diagram shows the world view of people like Musk or Bezos.

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