Romney's Tax Plan

[Master of Ossus]

I can't believe that Master of Asses is too stupid to realize that the y-axis is intrinsically represented by the size of the bars, and that moving the bars up would not affect the meaning of the graph at all. It would look like a pyramid.

|
||
|||
||||
|||||
||||
|||
||
|

Wow that graph is so different than his! It's not like a pyramid at all because I cheated and moved the shit up! Nevermind moving the bars up doesn't affect the information of the graph at all, given the y-axis is non-existant and represented by the size of the bars.

What a dumb fuck.

Good GOD you're a moron. You have defined a "pyramid" as consisting of a structure which has more people in its base than at higher levels. This id DEFINITIVELY DISPROVEN by the graph that I posted, earlier.

Here's an even more detailed breakdown which further disproves your argument. Not only are there MANY fewer people who earn $5000-$7500 than who earn $10,000-$12,500 (which in and of itself disproves your retarded idea), but there's a significant discontinuity and over TEN PERCENT of American wage earners earn over $90,000. Sorry, but that is not a pyramid. That is what is known as a "bell" shape. The number of workers does not increase as we stratify and look at progressively lower income groups, as your theory predicted.

[Master of Ossus]

You didn't post shit about Peak Oil and said you would. You deliberately ignore threads which pertain to economics, directly. You are the one who accuse me in posting in too many threads "I don't know shit about" so I feel fine accusing you of posting in too little threads which you know shit about to dodge the hard questions. What part of you reap what you sow you don't understand you dick?

Yes, because "laziness" is the same thing as "lying." As for "deliberately ignor[ing] threads which pertain to economics," wow! I don't post in every single thread in this forum--including ones that don't pertain to economics. I also deliberately ignore e-mails that promise me topless photos of Jennifer Anniston. Again, how do I sleep at night?

Arbitrary income brackets are what governments create to tax citizens you retard! Whether you like it or not, arbitrary income brackets are the way to identify class strata. But you deny this is even possible, when governments do this practically to collect taxes.

Clearly, but in order to create a pyramidal shape like the one you argued would necessarily exist, you have to create NON-STANDARD bins, which changed depending on their level. For instance, you would have to define the "base" of your pyramid as everyone making below $55,000, the "middle" of your pyramid as anyone making between $55,000 and $95,000, and the "top" of your pyramid as everyone over that. Needless to say, this is totally unreasonable. Once you set a bin size, you have to maintain consistency throughout.

By the way that graph exactly resembles a pyramid you liar! Rotate that shit 90 degrees and move the the categories horizontally rather than vertically (moving horizontally does not affect the amount of wealth the people earn) and you get a pyramid.

Bullshit. It's a bell-curve. According to your theory, the highest percentage of wage earners would be in the LOWEST INCOME BRACKET. According to my theory, the highest percentage would be somewhere in the middle. Now, where do the highest percentages of American workers fall, you lying shithead?

Could it be that you don't understand Grade 10 math? You don't understand that shifting on the x does not affect the y values, and shifting on the y does not affect the x values?

No, you just don't understand the information in the graph.

Wow you're a fucking moron. Let me spell it out for you. There is no fucking y axis in that picture you douche so it resembles a pyramid by just shifting up or are you too stupid to understand it? And I bet you'll semantic whore that there's the least amount of people at the bottom, nevermind that the reason there's nobody at the bottom is anti-capitalist forces such as redistribution of wealth (welfare, social assistance). Nevermind if you continue the graph, you'll get the most amount of people at the bottom anyway including all the people who break our monitors and ships in third world nations.

Bullshit. This graph shows a DENSITY, you moron. American salaries are clustered in the middle; not at the bottom as you claimed. This is also true of the world. It's a nice way to weasel out of this, Brian, but you forgot that all of this is in context of your earlier claims.

When I mentioned a pyramid structure a long time ago in some debate I don't even remember, Ossus said it doesn't make any sense. Nevermind that logic dictates for every man living a certain lifestyle, there must be two or three men making a lesser lifestyle below him and two or three men in a branch below that, and so on until the base which would contain the most people. A pyramid.

Not everybody can be a master you ass, and every master needs many servants below him and those servants need people below them too. Your kind of thinking, that there's no such thing as too many masters, is exactly what is leading America to the shitter.

These statements, combined with the graphs above, demonstrate definitively that you were wrong. US income distribution follows a bell curve. The lowest income brackets are NOT the most populous. "For every man living a certain lifestyle," there are NOT "two or three men" living lower lifestyles. Your statements were WRONG, brian, and you need to man up to it and admit it.

[brianeyci]

Yes, because a model has to exactly resemble the real world to be valid.

You completely ignore the huge masses of third and second world workers. The base does not end there you fucking retard -- it goes on until the entire human race is accounted for because economies are interconnected.

Face it you douchebag, there's more people in general in bracket i - 1 than in bracket i. And your own graph destroys your other point about creating arbitrary brackets. Even if I created arbitrary brackets, merging two or three brackets together, i - 1 would still have more people than bracket i. And what are you doing at the very bottom? Defining an arbitrary bracket you retard. If I merged the very bottom with the next bracket, there would be no outlier.

By the way that racist attack was pretty low. Do you or do you not believe that giving money to the people at the top will increase the wealth of the people at the bottom? Economists in general believe this, believe in the investor class as the most intelligent class, so if you don't then you're an outlier.

[Master of Ossus]

You completely ignore the huge masses of third and second world workers. The base does not end there you fucking retard -- it goes on until the entire human race is accounted for because economies are interconnected.

Bullshit. The average person in this world lives a second-world lifestyle--as I pointed out using the CIA World Factbook.

Face it you douchebag, there's more people in general in bracket i - 1 than in bracket i.

No, there aren't. There are more people living in the US than there are in Democratic Republic of Congo. How can you not be able to synthesize this information?

And your own graph destroys your other point about creating arbitrary brackets. Even if I created arbitrary brackets, merging two or three brackets together, i - 1 would still have more people than bracket i.

Christ on a pogostick! In that graph you reposted, brian, how many houses are in the left-most category? And how many houses are there in the one right next to it?

And what are you doing at the very bottom? Defining an arbitrary bracket you retard. If I merged the very bottom with the next bracket, there would be no outlier.

But you HAVE TO DO THAT in order to get your stupid pyramid shape. And that graph is too granular to show the real relationship (and it also deals with households and not individuals). The new graph that I've posted is much better for proving my point--more people make $90,000+ in this country than make <$20,000. That does not in the slightest conform with your theory that there are continuously fewer people in higher income groups--and the discontinuities at the upper end of the spectrum are impossible to explain using your theory.

By the way that racist attack was pretty low. Do you or do you not believe that giving money to the people at the top will increase the wealth of the people at the bottom?

I think that it does, slightly. I also think that there's a slight effect if you give money to the lowest class, but there's no logical requirement that either of these things hold true--they're just empirical observations because our economy is largely insular.

Economists in general believe this, believe in the investor class as the most intelligent class, so if you don't then you're an outlier.

Economists do not, in general, "believe in the investor class as the most intelligent class." Yet again you prove you have nothing other than strawmans to throw around when in a debate.

[brianeyci]

Yes, because "laziness" is the same thing as "lying."

I don't buy it dick. Omission is a form of lying and the people who omit always say they are lazy. You simply ignore the ones you know you'll lose in and participate in the ones you think you'll win in. Well you lost this one Master of Asses.

Take a look at this you fucking retard. Maybe then you'll see that the information contained in a graph shaped like a pyramid is exactly the same as your picture; the shape is irrelevant, only whether the function is bijective and an inverse exists (continuity can be achieved by discarding those income brackets and creating an equation.) Maybe you won't. I wouldn't expect much from a douche who probably had to take the easiest maths.

[Master of Ossus]

Yes, because "laziness" is the same thing as "lying."

I don't buy it dick. Omission is a form of lying and the people who omit always say they are lazy. You simply ignore the ones you know you'll lose in and participate in the ones you think you'll win in. Well you lost this one Master of Asses.

Again, Brian, I'm sorry that I have so much time on my hands to deliberately ignore the entire forum for long periods of time.

Take a look at this you fucking retard. Maybe then you'll see that the information contained in a graph shaped like a pyramid is exactly the same as your picture; the shape is irrelevant, only whether the function is bijective and an inverse exists (continuity can be achieved by discarding those income brackets and creating an equation.) Maybe you won't. I wouldn't expect much from a douche who probably had to take the easiest maths.

I considered that argument, and it would have fit EXCEPT for your statements about how the lower classes outnumbered the ones higher up. That's simply NOT TRUE. Repeating it is lying. US income distribution is bell-shaped, with the majority of people in what is generally considered the "middle class."

And what sort of math have you taken? I'm honestly curious. I haven't taken the hardest math classes in the world, since I topped off at differential equations, linear algebra, and four semesters of statistics or econ. statistics., so I'm honestly curious as to what sort of math you've been taking. For that matter, how old are you? From your posts I'm guessing 11-14? It's hard to tell whether you're just inexperienced or if you're honestly THIS DUMB.

PS. As to the entire world, you have not even ATTEMPTED to show that the world's population follows a pyramidal distribution, as opposed to the bell-shape one. Your only statements on this have been conclusory "it is because I say so," whereas I have posted a world income distribution chart that clearly shows that most people in the world are much higher than the "base" that you seem to alternately focus on exclusively or entirely ignore, as suits your purpose for the post.

Here's the chart for the world from 1970-2000. It's actually really cool. You can see that the world basically gets richer and more bell-shaped (keep in mind, the axis is logarithmic), but still skews to the right... funny... I though I said that early on the last page... somewhere... when I was arguing against some dumbass....

[Surlethe]

What sort of logic dictates that? If you want to be taken logically at face value, this pyramid of yours has no base and the human race is infinitely populous.

Well you can interpret it as a convergent infinite sequence. Since position in the sequence would be determined by an index, which in this case is wealth, the people at the bottom would have near zero wealth. Since each i > i+1, each human in the domain of total human population would be mapped to an index in the sequence based on their wealth. Just because the codomain is infinite, that doesn't mean the domain is infinite. I used the word "pyramid" as a simplification because I know most people cannot get over their heads that the sum of an infinite number of terms can be a value. Plus, models are simplifications of real-world anyway.

Did you understand what I wrote? Your key assertion was ∀ person ∃ people : peoples' income < person's income. Not only is this assertion baseless, it is also absurd, because if you have even one person then logic (the real kind) dictates that there must be an infinite number of people.

And this doesn't even address your description of it as a "sequence". Your model is better described as a tree with valence two or three.

ndeed? LOGIC dictates that for every man living a certain lifestyle, there MUST be two or three men making a lesser lifestyle below him?

This incredulity about not everybody can be a master is exactly what was discussed in that skilled trade thread. I was waiting for you to pop your head in that one, but you didn't at all, dodging the hard questions. Not everybody can be a master you ass, and every master needs many servants below him and those servants need people below them too. Your kind of thinking, that there's no such thing as too many masters, is exactly what is leading America to the shitter.

I can't believe that you're saying that wealth is not enough to gage happiness. Are you a damn economist or not? What if I show you a graph about number of Americans in the top bracket, and number of Americans below that, and below that, until you get to the bottom? What if I show you a picture of the entire fucking human race and you'd see that the bottom rung of the most poorest people is the largest strata? No doubt you would say that the shape does not exactly resemble a pyramid, as if a model has to be perfect to be applicable.

How can you post two long paragraphs without answering the simple little question he asked, you windbag?

[brianeyci]

Did you understand what I wrote? Your key assertion was ∀ person ∃ people : peoples' income < person's income. Not only is this assertion baseless, it is also absurd, because if you have even one person then logic (the real kind) dictates that there must be an infinite number of people.

And this doesn't even address your description of it as a "sequence". Your model is better described as a tree with valence two or three.

Well excuse me that I wasn't as careful as to mention that in general, there's less people in higher income brackets than people in lower income brackets. The two or three number was completely arbitrary, chosen without any regard as an illustration of the general concept. It's a semantic nitpick that you assault the number rather than the concept and you know it.

In other words it's a short form for saying for every master there's got to be more servants. Excuse me that I picked a specific example of two or three.

How can you post two long paragraphs without answering the simple little question he asked, you windbag?

I'm the windbag, when he expands my post into twenty different points?

His question was an incredulous hypothetical, not meant to be answered because he didn't believe what I said dick.

[Master of Ossus]

Well excuse me that I wasn't as careful as to mention that in general, there's less people in higher income brackets than people in lower income brackets. The two or three number was completely arbitrary, chosen without any regard as an illustration of the general concept. It's a semantic nitpick that you assault the number rather than the concept and you know it.

In other words it's a short form for saying for every master there's got to be more servants. Excuse me that I picked a specific example of two or three.

Alright, asshole. When are you going to get around to acknowledging that this general concept of yours isn't true?

I'm the windbag, when he expands my post into twenty different points?

His question was an incredulous hypothetical, not meant to be answered because he didn't believe what I said dick.

I'm not the one who's creating various positions and ascribing them to my opponent in an effort to confuse the issue, you lying sack of shit. And my question WAS incredulous, but it wasn't a hypothetical. Post evidence indicating that this "pyramid" theory of yours is correct. How can you look at that graph that I showed you and argue that the poorest people outnumber those higher than they are? Income tails off on BOTH sides of the distribution, and this is true for every country (although a few show multiple peaks). This is not a pyramid; it is a curve.

Not only is your "logic" clearly flawed, empirically, but you have not even attempted to justify this claim of yours. Under the "pyramid" concept, we would not expect to see a tail on the left-hand side of the distribution. Yet we do. Consistently. We would further not expect "multiple peaks," but this describes several countries' distributions (including the US'), and has described the income distribution of the world in general at various times in the last few decades.

[brianeyci]

I didn't make any shit up about you Master of Asses. You however, started making shit about me, "talking shit in threads you don't know" before even giving a rebuttal for a single point.

It's called a curve of best fit moron. You do know what a curve of best fit is, don't you? Or do you think that models have to be perfect to be applicable to the world? I fucking asked you that over and over, and you never gave an answer. Draw a curve y = a(1/x) and it approximates that graph with the right constant you dick. This is basic shit, and supports my pyramid concept, that for any income i, i-1 has more people in general. With my model, I can make predictions pretty close to the amount of people in each income bracket. But no doubt you'd continue to post graphs thinking you're right when they prove my point.

I'm done here. The crux of the matter is like IP says; you don't believe wealth distribution and frozen wages is a problem. What a dickweed. Why don't you walk out to those people who are making less money and ask them if they're more or less happy? .

[Glocksman]

Flaming aside, can someone tell me why treating non wage income differently from earned wage income is a good idea?
Frankly, I'd treat them exactly the same and tax them at exactly the same rates based on overall income levels.

IOW, if your total income regardless of source puts you in a 25% bracket, you pay that 25%, not 25% on the wage portion and 15% on the unearned portion.

[Master of Ossus]

I didn't make any shit up about you Master of Asses. You however, started making shit about me, "talking shit in threads you don't know" before even giving a rebuttal for a single point.

Let's list a few of your strawmen from this thread about me, you lying sack of shit.

1. "Master of Ossus doesn't buy that distribution of wealth can be evaluated at all."
2. "[Master of Ossus] sees the entire economy as interconnected as a spiderweb rather than class strata."
3. "[Master of Ossus is] saying that wealth is not enough to gage happiness."
4. "What's funny is that Ossus buys into the pyramid whether he knows it or not. He probably buys into the trickle down theory of economics, help the top then entire structure will be helped. Move up the top, and somehow the entire structure will be lifted as well. But for some reason, he doesn't buy into the idea of help the bottom then the entire structure will be lifted."
5. "You [Master of Ossus] deliberately ignore threads which pertain to economics, directly." (Not really a strawman--I also "deliberately ignore threads which pertain to" Brittney Spears, directly, but this was too funny not to re-post).
6. "Arbitrary income brackets are what governments create to tax citizens you retard! Whether you like it or not, arbitrary income brackets are the way to identify class strata. But you deny this is even possible, when governments do this practically to collect taxes."
7. "You completely ignore the huge masses of third and second world workers. The base does not end there you fucking retard -- it goes on until the entire human race is accounted for because economies are interconnected."

As for talking down to you before I rebutted anything you said, I rebutted your points in the SAME POST in which I started making fun of you.

It's called a curve of best fit moron. You do know what a curve of best fit is, don't you? Or do you think that models have to be perfect to be applicable to the world? I fucking asked you that over and over, and you never gave an answer. Draw a curve y = a(1/x) and it approximates that graph with the right constant you dick. This is basic shit, and supports my pyramid concept, that for any income i, i-1 has more people in general. With my model, I can make predictions pretty close to the amount of people in each income bracket. But no doubt you'd continue to post graphs thinking you're right when they prove my point.

Oh, bullshit. You were the one who said: "What if I show you a picture of the entire fucking human race and you'd see that the bottom rung of the most poorest people is the largest strata?" When I provided evidence that clearly showed that this was not true, you accused me of "completely ignoring" second- and third- world workers, as if this would prove your point (it doesn't--see the really cool chart I found).

It is plainly NOT TRUE that the "largest strata" consists of people in the bottom income groups--it clearly consists of people in the middle income groups, with tails on both ends (and, actually, with more people ABOVE the peak than below it).

I'm done here. The crux of the matter is like IP says; you don't believe wealth distribution and frozen wages is a problem.

More strawmen! Awesome.

What a dickweed. Why don't you walk out to those people who are making less money and ask them if they're more or less happy? .

Because economists have already done this for me, you fucking idiot. They're not less happy. You're just assuming that they are, and that economists believe that. They don't--economists are smarter than you are, and they bother to research what they say.

[brianeyci]

Well I thought about it and I'd like to apologize to Surlethe for calling him a dick. He is right, using the word "logic" is retarded given my piss poor explanation of it. I meant to say x1 < x2 < ... < xn for all x, and use a 3 or 2 as a specific example, but my communication was poor and that is obviously my own fault.

I'm not apologizing to you though Ossus. You say it's a strawman that you think frozen wages is not a problem? IP asked you the exact same question and you responded no it is not a problem. You don't want to admit when you're wrong, ever.

[Master of Ossus]

Well I thought about it and I'd like to apologize to Surlethe for calling him a dick. He is right, using the word "logic" is retarded given my piss poor explanation of it. I meant to say x1 < x2 < ... < xn for all x, and use a 3 or 2 as a specific example, but my communication was poor and that is obviously my own fault.

And when are you going to acknowledge that there IS NO PYRAMID? There is a significant left-hand tail to income distribution in the world.

When are you going to acknowledge that, contrary to your earlier statements, the bottom "rung" of the most poorest people is NOT the largest strata of workers in the world?

I'm not apologizing to you though Ossus. You say it's a strawman that you think frozen wages is not a problem? IP asked you the exact same question and you responded no it is not a problem.

IP asked me about REAL wages being frozen--and no, that's not real high up on my list of things to care about, provided that the starting point is more than adequate.

You also claimed that I did not believe that "wealth distribution is a problem," when in the SAME FUCKING POST you got that exchange between me and IP from I stated clearly "Wealth distribution can cause problems."

I also love the way you bust out your "lie by omission" by responding to ONE of your strawmen, but not even acknowledging the six others that I clearly went back and listed for you. What's the matter? Are the questions too tough for you?

You don't want to admit when you're wrong, ever.

Hello, Mr. Kettle. So good of you to join me.

[brianeyci]

When the fuck are you going to acknowledge that a model doesn't have to be perfect to make predictions? By your retarded viewpoint a model has to be perfect to make predictions. Nevermind the graphs you've posted are about America only. Newsflash retard, there's billions of people who are poorer than you. You lie, over and over, about how the bottom rung doesn't have the most people. It does -- you just don't count the guys breaking ships, stripping wires from monitors or making trinkets in China as people. No surprise.

There's a nice little thread with the lead economist of the world, Mr. Alan Greenspan, saying a recession is 50% likely. Why dont you walk in and defend him you retard? Economists are smart my ass; smart in the way a coin is.

[Master of Ossus]

When the fuck are you going to acknowledge that a model doesn't have to be perfect to make predictions? By your retarded viewpoint a model has to be perfect to make predictions.

Another strawman. Have you collected your arrows, yet, K'ung-ming? You've certainly built enough strawmen.

I never CLAIMED it had to be perfect to make predictions. However, your claim was unequivocal:

"logic dictates for every man living a certain lifestyle, there must be two or three men making a lesser lifestyle below him and two or three men in a branch below that, and so on until the base which would contain the most people. A pyramid."

Furious backpedaling aside, that is NOT the picture of the world's economy, or even this economy. The poorest groups are NOT the most populous. The distribution of global income tails off at BOTH ends, and there are discontinuities near the higher end which totally disprove your claims. For that matter, since YOU were the one who initially made the claim, YOU have the burden of proving them. You have completely shirked this burden, even when specifically asked for information by Surlethe and me.

Debating Rule 6. "If you are asked for evidence to support a claim you've made, you should either produce this evidence or concede the point until such time as you can produce this evidence. People who consistently ignore requests for evidence to support their claims (particularly contentious claims) are not looked upon kindly here."

I call that our "put up or shut up" rule. Not only have you BLATANTLY violated this rule in this thread (as well as Rule 5--the broken record thing), but you have totally ignored evidence DISPROVING your claim. Namely this graph, inter alia. Look at this graph. This shows the distribution of income across the entire world. I know that I used a big word when I introduced it as having a logarithmic scale, but regardless it shows that you are INARGUABLY wrong. You also could've gotten this from the CIA World Factbook listing of GDP/capita, as I pointed you to earlier. You totally ignored this evidence, as well. I therefore invoke DR 6. Put up or shut up.

Nevermind the graphs you've posted are about America only. Newsflash retard, there's billions of people who are poorer than you.

BULLSHIT. I posted this graph repeatedly. You have repeatedly ignored it. It covers MANY countries, AND the world, from 1970 to 2000. Many of those countries exhibit phenomenon that are totally unaccountable under your "global economy as a pyramid scheme" nonsense--including things like multiple peaks. I pointed out that world income distribution from 1970-2000 has shown that the world is getting richer and more bell-shaped. You have completely ignored this, and now you accuse ME of lying about it?

You lie, over and over, about how the bottom rung doesn't have the most people. It does -- you just don't count the guys breaking ships, stripping wires from monitors or making trinkets in China as people. No surprise.

For the last fucking time, no the "bottom rung" doesn't have the most people. The graph that I showed specifically includes countries like China and India, but perhaps more relevantly Bangladesh. It covers the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. And it definitively disproves your nonsense, which you at first argued that "logic" "dictate[d]" as a natural consequence (of something or other). From now on, until you acknowledge this graph's existence, every post that I make in this thread will begin with a link to that graph. It PROVES that your "pyramid of power" idea is wrong. Not only is this idea not a logical conclusion that you can reasonably draw based on anything, but it fails to describe reality. This graph has grace. No reasonable person can look at this graph and argue that the lowest economic group is also the most populous. There's a tail on both ends of the income distribution, and this tail has existed since the 1970's and gotten more pronounced as median and mean incomes increased across the globe (and the world got more populace).

There's a nice little thread with the lead economist of the world, Mr. Alan Greenspan, saying a recession is 50% likely. Why dont you walk in and defend him you retard?

Because I don't care? What am I supposed to say? That Greenspan is a smart guy? I don't even know what the thread's about, and frankly I don't especially care about recessions since they essentially don't hurt me at all. Why is Greenspan even under attack for making a statement like that? Why do you assume that I have to care about every thread that remotely involves the economy? Am I to summon you to every thread that involves idiocy or brain-damaged six-year olds?

Economists are smart my ass; smart in the way a coin is.

And you're smart in the way that a fifth grader with delusions of grandeur is. Grow up, kid.

[K. A. Pital]

Thanks for the graph here, illuminating.

The annual income of 90% of US citizens is less than 50K, if I understand that correctly. Therefore, all cuts to people above 50K would mean giving cuts to the richest decile. Whereas cuts to 200K and above, and 250K and above cover the tiny percentage of the rich.

I'd make the plank 50K, end of story - easing things for those below 50K - after all, they're the bulk of people in the country - but remove cuts for those over 50K.

And I kind of don't understand the core of the argument going on here. What is the hindrance to seeing the U.S. distribution as a pyramid? Reduction of numbers in the lowest quintille? That's not much of a problem - the lowest quintille represents people bordering on poverty, you know. They're also often largely out of the production process - the sickly, ill, the unemployed, the old. The last medium-productive strata is also the most massive in numerical terms, and it shrinks with every new income plank.

As for the world, it's graph looks more like a huge syphon of sorts where large masses in the 2nd and 3rd world are below, and the US and high-income OECD are above:

[brianeyci]

What is the hindrance to seeing the U.S. distribution as a pyramid? Reduction of numbers in the lowest quintille?

It's because Master of Asses is a big fat fucking moron who thinks that models have to be perfect, or is a big fat fucking liar.

Check out this graph he says proves his point repeatedly. Take a look at the x-axis. See anything off with it? Anything wrong? That's right, the x-axis is not to scale. It treats the distance between 100 and 1000 as exactly the same as the distance between 1000 to 10000. More ridiculously, the distance between 10000 and 100000 is the same too.

Your graph is a lot better. You can see the difference between rural China and urban China especially, where the purest kind of capitalism exists. It's modeled by y = a(1/x). The US portion of the graph is modeled by y = a(1/x) too. The entire world could be modeled by y=a(1/x), but there's mitigating factors such as lack of pure free trade, war, governments and... sensibility. See, what Master of Ossus is too moronic to understand is that in attempting basic modeling, you strip as many extraneous variables as possible, like how when you encounter the heat equation for the first time in physics you ignore the heat that leaks out of the pipe, or the heat that leaks in the opposite direction. That doesn't mean the basic heat equation is invalid any more than it means that y=a(1/x) is invalid in describing that graph.

Master of Asses seems to think it's devastating to my argument that the shape of the graph isn't a perfect pyramid, when almost the entire graph, the first graph he posted is a pyramid. Your graph is even better at illustrating the point.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, in case of equization of all nations under a US-resembling model, I would suggest that all more or less productive members of society would line up so that each new income level houses less persons than the one below it. The "worthless", i.e. very low-income paupers and "labour reserves" in the form of unemployed would make up a large fraction, but nonetheless lower than the lowest fraction of the productive members.

So the pyramid in such a case would look as a pine tree, resembling a pyramid for, say, ~90% percent of humans (the majority) and rapidly contracting at the very base, where the lowest of the low dwell.

The U.S. distribution isn't unique methinks, it resembles stratified capitalistic societies in the 2nd and 3rd world quite probably, except the curves there can be more extreme. I'd figure that out in a while, through the UN HDR report stats.

[Master of Ossus]

What is the hindrance to seeing the U.S. distribution as a pyramid? Reduction of numbers in the lowest quintille?

It's because Master of Asses is a big fat fucking moron who thinks that models have to be perfect, or is a big fat fucking liar.

Again, the central tenant of your idiocy is that the world's poorest people outnumber all higher levels of income. This is not true.

Check out this graph he says proves his point repeatedly. Take a look at the x-axis. See anything off with it? Anything wrong? That's right, the x-axis is not to scale. It treats the distance between 100 and 1000 as exactly the same as the distance between 1000 to 10000. More ridiculously, the distance between 10000 and 100000 is the same too.

You are, honestly, this stupid, aren't you? I mean, how did I make a mistake like missing the fact that a graph's axis was logarithmic? Oh, wait, I INTRODUCED the graph as using a logarithmic scale. Here are some quotes:

Here's the chart for the world from 1970-2000. It's actually really cool. You can see that the world basically gets richer and more bell-shaped (keep in mind, the axis is logarithmic), but still skews to the right... funny... I though I said that early on the last page... somewhere... when I was arguing against some dumbass....

Look at this graph. This shows the distribution of income across the entire world. I know that I used a big word when I introduced it as having a logarithmic scale, but regardless it shows that you are INARGUABLY wrong. You also could've gotten this from the CIA World Factbook listing of GDP/capita, as I pointed you to earlier. You totally ignored this evidence, as well. I therefore invoke DR 6. Put up or shut up.

Hilariously, Brian STILL doesn't get it. He's honestly this dumb. Moreover, he treats it as being somehow dishonest that I would present a graph that used a logarithmic scale (an imminently reasonable thing to do when working with density functions like this) as a... graph that uses a logarithmic scale! My god! I'm such a liar!

What grade are logarithms introduced in, again? Oh, yeah. eighth, apparently. What is that? Junior HS? And what was it that he said to me earlier in this very thread?

Could it be that you don't understand Grade 10 math? [...] Wow you're a fucking moron

Your graph is a lot better. You can see the difference between rural China and urban China especially, where the purest kind of capitalism exists.

How is that graph better?
1. It treats each country/region's population as being discrete--that's how it creates those seemingly-large discrepencies (also, it doesn't seem to account for every country). The graph that I originally presented takes into account the distribution WITHIN COUNTRIES as well as the distribution amongst countries--when comparing the income of the entire world's population, there is no question which is the superior graph.
2. It just disguises the actual relationship because the high end has much lower density, and by treating this as a line graph rather than a density curve.
3. It makes some seriously erroneous claims, such as lumping "rural India" in with "Africa," even though (as you can see from my chart) the poorest 2% of Indians still make more income annually than many of the poorest world citizens who live in Africa (or even many citizens of Pakistan or Bangladesh). Thus, it totally disguises the LENGTH of the left-hand tail, which is the whole focus of our analysis.

It's not a bad graph--it would be useful in a pinch (it still shows the tail), but it clearly pales in comparison to the one that I provided, especially for the use you are attempting to put them to.

It's modeled by y = a(1/x). The US portion of the graph is modeled by y = a(1/x) too. The entire world could be modeled by y=a(1/x), but there's mitigating factors such as lack of pure free trade, war, governments and... sensibility. See, what Master of Ossus is too moronic to understand is that in attempting basic modeling, you strip as many extraneous variables as possible, like how when you encounter the heat equation for the first time in physics you ignore the heat that leaks out of the pipe, or the heat that leaks in the opposite direction. That doesn't mean the basic heat equation is invalid any more than it means that y=a(1/x) is invalid in describing that graph.

Do you seriously look at a graph like this and say, "gee... that looks as if it would be well-modeled with y=a(1/x)? Or do you say, "gee... that approximates a normal distribution?" Seriously. Your model ignores everything to the left of the peak, in which a substantial fraction of the world's population lies. If by stripping away "as many extraneous variables as possible," you mean ignoring everything to the left of the peak, then you're right--I'm leaving that in there. Moreover, what in the hell do factors like "lack of pure free trade, war, governments and... sensibility" have to do with the data that has been presented, which unequivocally is better modeled with a normal curve than with your idiotic hyperbolic function?

Master of Asses seems to think it's devastating to my argument that the shape of the graph isn't a perfect pyramid, when almost the entire graph, the first graph he posted is a pyramid. Your graph is even better at illustrating the point.

Brian, there is NO graph here that is more accurately modeled using y=a(1/x) than by a bell curve--all of them have tails to the left, which your model completely ignores. Sorry, that's not a curve of best fit--that's sheer intellectual dishonesty. And that IS devastating to your claim when you're arguing unequivocally that the poorest people are also the most populous. Again, you may be able to DEFINE people below the peak as constituting the poorest group, and thereby ignore this difficulty, but when you're arguing against someone whose hypothesis PREDICTS such a tail, it destroys your argument.

[brianeyci]

Too bad Stas Bush doesn't agree with you dumbass. But of course you will probably dismiss him as a communist nutjob.

I am well aware that the shit goes up in powers of ten, ten to the power of one, ten to the power of two, ten to the power of three. But it is not as honest as Stas Bush's graph with a direct one to one scale -- it was chosen specifically to make my point seem more ridiculous, ironically violating your own point earlier about requiring income brackets to be the same amount, or the independent variables to be the same distance. And you mention it, as if mentioning it addresses the problem of dishonest representation. You deliberately fucked around with the scale to make the graph appear more like the normal distribution when my entire point is i - 1 > i. You don't see a fucking problem with that? Here's a hint dickbrain, see if you can remember how to factor and pick out 1/x from P(x).

Stas already gave a good reason to exclude the end of the graph, and so did Glocksman. There's no reason to include the infirm, the sick, the elderly, the unemployed with people actually contributing to the economy. There's even no reason to include people totally disconnected from the global economy, such as much of Africa. You have anything to say to this point? Or are we going to include tress, Darth Vader and Japanese robots who also don't work?

Face it dickbrain -- you had to resort to dicking around with the scale. What about the point I made about China, which does not have that drop at the end in Stas's graph? Why the fuck not? Because anti-capitalist forces such as regulation, strong central government and anti-corruption are weak there. You going to say anything about this?

[Surlethe]

Brian, by your logic the ultraviolet catastrophe in the classical description of blackbody radiation is a better model than Planck's formula. That is, unless you're willing to concede that a log-normal density distribution is a better description of incomes distribution than a hyperbola.

[brianeyci]

Master of Asses was the one who came out and said "pyramid invalid, normal distribution better," I did not go the other way around. I tried to get it through his thick skull that there's little difference with the coffee mug turning into a torus, but he didn't get it.

This is all a defense of my pyramid hypothesis, not proof that a pyramid is better than a normal distribution. He doesn't seem prepared to accept there are more people in lower income brackets in general than in higher income brackets, and that capitalist societies tend to this. In fact Stas and Glock make good points that all the data points below the mean should be excluded, by virtue of non-contributors to the economy.

[Surlethe]

Master of Asses was the one who came out and said "pyramid invalid, normal distribution better," I did not go the other way around. I tried to get it through his thick skull that there's little difference with the coffee mug turning into a torus, but he didn't get it.

I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate here, but whatever it is, it's not getting through. What does topology have to do with this?

This is all a defense of my pyramid hypothesis, not proof that a pyramid is better than a normal distribution. He doesn't seem prepared to accept there are more people in lower income brackets in general than in higher income brackets, and that capitalist societies tend to this.

A defense of a hypothesis requires demonstrating that the hypothesis reasonably accounts for the data, which yours doesn't.

[Surlethe]

It is interesting, looking at the graph Master of Ossus posted, to consider how the distribution of US incomes seems to be developing multiple peaks. The same thing happens in the Chinese distribution, but more drastically.