Sunday 10 March 2013

The Income Distribution Curve

One of the blogs that I follow had a post last week that has had me thinking for quite a while. You can check out The Simple Dollar’s article here. Or you can get the short version and watch the video below.

 

The questions that kept coming to mind were what about the bottom 10% and why would you want to climb the income distribution curve?

The 7-min movie spends a lot of time pointing at the top 1% as being a problem in America since they hold the lion’s share of the wealth. What it doesn’t tell us about are the people at the bottom of the curve. Such as how many people are below the poverty line and how this impacts their ability to provide the basic essentials of life. I don’t see one person having a lot of money as a problem. I do see people not having enough money to meet the basics of living as a problem. Yet the video is more concerned at vilifying those with money than looking at the issues surrounding those who do not have enough.

The article goes on to provide advice on how to climb the income distribution. I don’t understand why you would make climbing the curve of wealth a life goal. Once you have enough to pay for your needs and have something saved for the future, why would you spend your life energy chasing a larger dollar value for your bank account? I fail to see how a net value twice what you need to live on would make you any happier than just what you need to live on.

Make sure that you have enough to live on. Then make sure that your neighbors have the same. Once these are taken care of, spend your life in the pursuit of happiness. And, personally, I have never seen happiness come with a dollar value.

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