(via aaaargh) – a very cool picture which made me look-up stuff.

Much like the Pareto Principle: when you look at the houses for sale in your district and would range them by price you would see a sort of steep slope. Meaning: 20% of the people can buy the real expensive houses and 80% of uhm… “us” (I presume) dwell around the cheaper stuff. Meaning 80% of the income goes to 20% of the people. This guy invented it / discovered it:

Put that on your t-shirt and all of us will know what you mean. Is it fair? Probably it’s the best we can come up with I guess.

The picture underneath is in Dutch, it shows the amount of houses for sale on the Y column and the price on the X column (in my district). The first red line shows what someone with a modal income can afford. The second red line shows what someone with 2 times modal can afford (modal is the average income, meaning 50% is to left of the first red line).

See also the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient, the Gini Coefficient is used to determine inequality. The piece in Wikipedia about it is well worth reading, maybe you can use it, the next time this topic comes up in your local bar.

A Gini Coefficient of 100 would be cool. This would mean that one person would hold all income while the rest holds nothing, apparently Namibia comes closest with a score of 74.3, I wonder what’s going on there. The most equal distribution of wealth goes to Azerbaijan, not surprisingly since it’s the world’s fastest growing economy in the world. These guys have oil, crops, mines, seafood, silk, etc… unfortunately Human Rights has not the highest priority in this predominantly Muslim country.