Fugato

Note to self: do not buy scientific instruments from websites that smack of the previous millennium.

Many people lose sleep over the idea that (great) wealth is increasingly unevenly distributed, that fewer people have amassed a larger share of the pie than ever before. This conviction seems to arise from observing the very richest and wrinkling one’s nose and scoffing and being indignant.

(Is anyone ever dignant?)

The New York Times today published a summary of the 30 richest Americans of all time, measuring their riches in today’s dollars using the relative share of GDP.

Two of them are alive today, Bill Gates (ranking fifth) and Warren Buffett. Sam Walton founder of WalMart died in 1992, all the others were dead by 1950.

The four richest were born in 1750, 1763, 1794, and 1839.

There’s more to it, of course, but in any case this hardly supports the notion that wealth is more unevenly distributed extreme wealth is accrued by fewer people now than it used to be.

Incidentally, these moguls have one notable thing in common: they all have a Y chromosome. It seems worth investigating the role of this genetic trait in the accumulation of wealth.