fewy

The West Wing had a good quote on this:

TOBY The pills cost 'em four cents a unit to make.

JOSH You know that's not true. The second pill cost 'em four cents; the first pill cost 'em four hundred million dollars.

If you want to step up and by the first pill I'm sure they won't have a problem bringing down the costs. It cost them 11 billion to buy the company which did the R&D for this drug.

This is pretty good math work. Take a look at the actual data below.

Shares of Household Income by Quintile, 2011

Quintile Share Lowest quintile 3.2 Second quintile 8.4 Third quintile 14.3 Fourth quintile 23.0 Highest quintile 51.1

The pie we are looking at is in percent, the article stated that the top 1% took a bigger share of it than before. This means they took a bigger share of your productivity gains. But why argue about such things, it would be easier if you can show me a mathematical example where the top 1% take a bigger percentage of the pie yet the median increases. Let me know if you like the results you come up with.

clarkmoody,

You seem to miss the point that this is a zero sum game, you only have 100% of the pie to go around. If the top 1% take more of it, it means the other 99% get less. So it does in fact matter how much the top earners make because it will lower the median income if they take more money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...