The Real Numbers: Half of America in Poverty -- and It's Creeping toward 75%

[karynnj]

69. Even with this distribution, the average of a group can not be used

to mean all people (households) in the group are below or near that average. I am not assuming ANY distribution at all - and clearly not a normal distribution. It is pretty obvious that it is not a normal distribution. You are the one bringing up assumptions of distributions. (It would be very hard to construct a distribution where nearly everyone below 50% is close to or lower than the average $18,000 AND nearly everyone below 75% is close to or lower than the average $31,000. This would NOT be true with the curve you listed - even if the entire population below 75% was the part < 1 on your scale.)

By the way, I worked as a statistician at AT&T Bell Labs for more than 20 years. That I was hired and not fired suggests that they were more confident in my abilities than you.