From Pareto's rule to the rich 1%

Most of us remember that the Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Likewise, from what I've been told there are about 1,000 real estate agents around Park City, but I bet that only 50 of them control 95% of the total business.

This means a handful of them do really, really well, while the majority of them starve or make do with the remaining crumbs.

The same could be said about the entertainment and art business. Can we say that 5% of the singers or groups control 95% of the revenue? Same thing for artists of all stripes, from actors to dancers or painters? Probably.

Now if we revisit the much-maligned richest 1% of the U.S. population, we're told that these lucky households are earning more than $400,000 a year and their wealth is north of $10,000,000.

Too many zeros, not enough percents!