Income doesn’t fit a bell curve, at least not at the high end. The bottom 5% of U.S. households have incomes below $10,000, the median U.S. household has an income of $67,463, the top 1% earn $504,000 a year, while Elon Musk sold at least $4 billion in stock this year . Assuming about 122 million households in the U.S., if household income fit a bell curve, it would look like this:
$10,000 = -1.66 SD (standard deviation) (bottom 5% of bell curve)
$67,463 = 0 SD (middle of bell curve)
$504,000 = +2.33 SD (top 1% of bell curve)
$4 billion = +5.66 SD (top one in 122 million on bell curve)
But as we can see, most of the data points are nowhere near the line of best fit:
To make the distribution more normal (which is useful for regression analysis), scientists often take the natural log of income instead of income itself. If we do this, we get the following:
9.21 = -1.66 SD (bottom 5% of bell curve)
11.12 = 0 SD (middle of bell curve)
13.13 = +2.33 SD (top 1% of bell curve)
22.1 = +5.66 SD (top one in 122 million on the bell curve)
When we use the natural log of income, it relates to normalized Z scores in a much more linear way.
Perhaps Elizabeth Warren or some other left-wing politician could propose a tax bill where people could keep 100% of their household income, as long as it didn’t exceed the natural log multiplied by $10,000. That way the middle class and below would not have to pay anything, but the top 1% could only keep $130,000 of their $504,000 a year, and Elon Musk could only keep about $220,000 of his $4 billion stock sale.
Of course such a law would probably destroy the economy but at least Marxists would finally have an intelligent answer to the question “what’s my fair share?” when they demand rich folks pay it.
Your fair share is how much the bell curve says it should be. The bell curve is natural law.
Pumpkin Person 
I had a similar idea about logarithmic tax rates, although the details, insofar as I thought of any, were far less extreme
Great minds think alike
I say this is wrong because it doesn’t take into account negative income, in other words people who fall into severe debt. This group would fall into slavery in premodern conditions, I bet. The left part of the bell curve is actually those with less than zero income. So it’s difficult to fit income into a normal distribution.
I’ve always speculated that modern prison inmates and those with extreme debt would’ve been slaves in most societies 100+ years ago…
I asked Paul Cooijmans what he thinks Chris Langan’s I.Q. is. He said he thinks it’s between 150 and 170. I believe Paul was active in high-I.Q. societies while Chris was, so I suppose the former has observed the latter firsthand, but I don’t know if they’ve ever corresponded.
Are you active in any societies?
Ye
Ganzir is a devout member of the Nation of Islam!
Puppy thinks everything should fit the bell curve to make his data analysis easier. Great theory puppy. I hope it works out for you someday.
Bruno should be ashamed of his deep stupidity for voting Macron. Macron promised to lower all workers incomes and cut pensions and maintain open borders. And basically the only thing he promised was that he wouldn’t call you racist if you agreed with him.
Sadly, the french voters aren’t very intelligent like Bruno and voted for an obvious globalist puppet.
I won’t tell you for whom I voted for, nor if I voted, the 4 times Macron presented himself to 2 steps presidential election process … but I can tell you that I have never found him convincing about any subject at all, included the ones where I would agree with his position even before he talked and even if I find him very charming, despite a little cheap lemon car reseller smile and look, that would have put me off if I had to do business with him.
I am not “ashamed of my deep stupidity” – whatever that means – in any way – and “au contraire !” as we say in France, with my wife, I am enjoying nice and long Spanish Chiclana holidays 🙂
despite the obesity and beard…
ignore the deaf part.