• Crowfiend@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      8 months ago

      Using median makes it a loaded statistic skewed in favor of the minority (in this case, the wealthy).

      Over half the country is living paycheck-to-paycheck, so that median number is already in the ‘well-off’ category by default, making them irrelevant to the main point of discussion.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        You have it backwards. The mean, not the median, is skewed by outliers.

        If there are ten people in a room with $10 and one person with $1,000,000, the median is $10 whereas the mean is ~$90,000.

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        You might not know what median means (math pun!).

        Averages or Means are skewed by outliers, not the median. The median is just picking the middle number in a list of numbers. There is no skewing possible. If you have 99 people making $1 per year and one person making $1B per year, the median is $1. The average/mean is $1,000,000.99 which is way skewed.

      • Ragnarok314159
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Got to eat. Retirement is gone, and your 401k is nothing more than a subsidy so you can work part time as a greeter until death.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        At age 40, it’s recommended that you put 60-80% of retirement funds into the stock market. Doubling that is still significant.