[donmeaker]

Lets give people some facts. The measure of income inequality is the Gini coeffecient. If all the income is owned by one person, and noone else has any income, the Gini coefficient is 1.0, and if everyone has the exact same income the Gini coefficient is Zero.

Since 1994 the US Gini Coefficient has been, for individuals, about 0.5, with small variations from 0.499 all the way to 0.512

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/10/shocking-trend-in-us-individual-income.html

[donmeaker]

by the way, the political calculations site is a great resource. The first time I found it, I was able to read it for about 4 hours a day for about 3 days. I am an engineer, so tend to be very at home with numbers and graphs.

And ok, the Gini Coefficient for the US from 1994 to 2010 gets all the way down to 0.494 in the graph. Wow.

[Utmost Certainty]

Thanks for that link; I was just in an argument with someone the other day who insisted that the Gini coeff. for the US was close to 1.

I ended up dismissing their claim as irrelevant, that "wealth equality" is a specious normative standard which impels goofy policy decisions.