Averages

Something to keep in mind when people start talking about average incomes or tax refunds or whatever: if by "average" they mean "mean", it's worse than useless.

Say you have 100 people making $20,000. If you add one person making $2 million, your "average income" is $39,603 - yet almost everyone makes only just over half that. (If you have 2 rich guys, the average jumps to $58,283, well over twice what almost everyone actually makes.)

And if your one rich guy makes $20 million, it's $217,821. If he makes $500 million it's $4,970,297 - the average income is now twice what all but 1 person COMBINED actually make.