For those of you who visit a lot of blogs, you’re probably familiar with this graph :

For those of you who can’t read it : the top 1% will receive an average of $11,483, while the average for the bottom 80% is only $29.50. As mentioned by Matthew Yglesias, a surprisingly large number of people actually consider themselves part of the “top 1%” :

The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them.

A far better tactic is to replace the term “top 1%” with “people who make more than $374,000 per year”.

What’s even more troubling is the tricky use of the term “average” to hide these kinds of disparities :

Whenever the average of X is well above the median of X, you know that the distribution of X is skewed upward. Suppose you and ten friends are in a room and that the average income in the room is $50k, which is also the median (half make more than $50k, half make less). Now take your wealthiest friend and replace him with Bill Gates, who makes $1 billion per year. The average income becomes $104.5 million, but the median remains unchanged at $50 thousand.

So while the graph above is technically correct when it says the average taxpayer will get $29.50, it’s more likely that the median taxpayer will only receive $2.50.