Quiz Q: What Is the Median Income in the United States?

I.e., the mean income was "$17,210 (39.73%) higher than the median household income" - there's how much the ultra-high incomes skew the numbers.

I.e., the mean income was "$17,210 (39.73%) higher than the median household income" - there's how much the ultra-high incomes skew the numbers.

The median what income? Whose income are you ranking before you pick the middle rank? Households? Individuals? What?

Well... Not quite accurate though. 36% of the U.S. housholds make more than the average. They all contribute to bringing it up to that level.

fishin wrote:

Well... Not quite accurate though. 36% of the U.S. housholds make more than the average. They all contribute to bringing it up to that level.

Sure, but the higher up you go, the more they contribute to the difference.

You're goin' get bit in the ass by the law of diminishing returns. As you climb the income scale, the population of those earning those higher amounts decreases, and very likely, begins to decrease much more rapidly than the income earned increases.

CHART OF THE DAY: WHAT'S THE MIDDLE CLASS?

[Commenter] Abject Funk wonders if, per Charlie Gibson's theorizing about a middle class in which people make $200,000, I could provide a breakdown of the income brackets in this country. No problem. What follows is a graph showing the lower bound for each fifth of the income distribution. So the first quintile starts a $0, then the next bar is the start of the second quintile, and so forth. For comparison sake, I also included the top 5 percent, and Charlie Gibson's middle class.





His middle class is what the rest of us would call rich. Gibson, of course, would not. He likely lives in New York City or Washington D.C, both places where it's possible to earn $200,000 and feel squeezed. But the fact that even a family making $200,000 can't live a lifestyle free from all prudence does not make them middle class. Rather, it's just a reflection of the extraordinary wealth that's concentrated into a few hands in this country, and the degree to which inequality has mixed with economic segregation to produce a wildly skewed vision of what constitutes the economic norm. One has to wonder, though, how a media that thinks $200,000 is "middle class" could possibly do a serious job of reporting on a country where the median household income is around $60,000.