Tour of the US income distribution – “The L Curve”

Everyone knows about the Lorenz Curve but with the OWS events of late I came across the ‘L Curve”.

The red line represents a graph of family income across the population. The height of the curve at any point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equalling that income.

On the scale of the football field graph shown here the bottom 99% of the population measure their incomes in inches. The top 1% measure their incomes as stacks of $100 bills feet or even miles high! The total wealth of the few people in the vertical spike equals the total wealth of the rest of the population combined.

- The family at the 50th percentile, the 50-yard line of the football field, has an income of $40,000 (A stack of $100 bills 4cm tall)

- The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 10cm high.
- At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about 30cm high.

- The curve reaches $1 million (a 101cm high stack of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.

- From there it keeps going up and at 50 kilometers, the pile of $100 bills extends beyond the stratosphere, more than 5 times the height of Mt. Everest.

Here is the link – just keep clicking Zoom Out on the site The L-Curve