not by chance

I had wanted to show an actual graph of the incomes of 100% of the U.S. population, to show how skewed it was, but for 98 percent of the population, the graph looks like a flat line almost on the x-axis then zooming almost straight up at the end.  I may still try one without maintaining interval space between the zero to almost zero of the 500,000  homeless at the bottom to the approximately 350 at the top--the top 99.999999 making up to 11.5 billion per year.

The normal or bell curve is basically a representation of a probability formula.  Most of nature follows such a formula on the population level.  You expect the majority of people to fall in the middle 80% then the remaining 20% will be divided at both ends.

Normally (pun intended, if you were to divide up the $11.5 billion in a naturally occurring way, you would expect the same number of people on either side of the median--by definition, the 50%ile, where half the people are on the right and half the people are on the left.

The median income in the USA in this time period (plus or minus 3 years) is about $52,000 per year.  The 10th percentile is about $13,493 and the 90th percentile (the same number of people on the other end of the curve) is about $150,000.  That is not as outlandish a shape for a bell curve, but shows that 50% of us are not making half of the income, or even close.  if those 10th and 90th were completely a function of probability, then we would expect the median to be about $75,000 a year, then half making upward and half downward.

When you look at the homeless who are closer to 1.56 percent of the population, and since they are at the bottom they are also at about the equivalent of the 1% we used to hear about, only on the left of the curve, you would expect a median closer to $325,000 per year.  (I think I could live on that)  but instead of being the median, it is the income of a person at the 97th percentile.

If you use the zero on the left against the $11.5 billion on the far right, you move the expected median to $5.5 billion, which sounds ridiculous and in truth,a person at the 99.9th %ile is only making $2 million per year.

This is not a normal curve and it is not a natural effect of probability.  Someone has rigged the system.  We have a very few people benefiting from the rigging, and a whole lot of people being forced to peddle as fast as they can for a future success that will never happen.

If you can't picture the curve, then try a verbal pictogram:

There are 100 people in the room,

•      1 of them will be homeless,

•      9 of them will be making about $13,000 and depending on what state they are in and whether they are male or female or have children or not they will qualify for SNAP, or              housing assistance or even some supplemental cash (because it is not currently possible to live a happy/healthy life on $13,000 a year anymore). 
•      15 of those hundred will be making more than the $13,000 but under the poverty level of $23,283, and if they are not a healthy and single young person with no kids, may still qualify for some government assistance.  These people would like to be middle-class.
•       9 people will be making about $32,000 and will be struggling but will not qualify for any help.  These people are trying to be middle-class
•       15 people will be making around the national median income of about $51,939, and if they are married to a working spouse they may be doing tolerably well, but if they are single or worse, single with dependents, they may still be struggling, and who am I kidding, that is a tight budget, it is not the kind of income that enables people to create and envision a better future.  These people should be middle-class by definition.
•      17 people will be making around $72 thousand a year and they can buy better things and eat better food and maybe put a little in a retirement account.  They consider themselves middle-class.
•      13 of those people are making about $100,000 a year and those first 50 people dream of that and what they could accomplish if they made that.  They consider themselves middle-class.
•      9 of those people make  $150,000 and next to the previous 80 people, there is some disposable income in that.  Those designer jeans might not be second-hand and the car cost more than the first 25 people in the room can spend on housing.  They consider themselves middle-class.
•      6 people make around $250,000 per year and the government considers them middle-class even though they make about 5 times what the median group makes.  They buy homes, different homes in different neighborhood than the first 50 people in the room, can afford a private education, vacations every year, passports, summer homes, than those first 50 people in the room think they are rich--not middle-class.
•      1 person makes about $325,000, which means they have as much money every year as one of the previous six people, plus the income of 9 people making $13,000 a year.  
•      1 person makes about $450,000 which is as much as  the first 20 people in the room.
•      1 person makes at least $750,000 a year, which is more than the first 25 people make in a year.

If you have a million people in the room, one of them will make about $11 billion.  That could raise the income of every one of those million persons in the room to at least $50,000 a year.

Probability has no formula that would create this, human-made laws created this inequality.  Time to fix the laws.