Wealth disparity explained by a poker tournament
I calculated this originally as a comment to a friend's Facebook post, but I have come to think it is a good enough explanation of the economic problems in our country that it deserves a wider audience. 80% of the population has roughly 7% of all the wealth 1% of the population has roughly 40% of all the wealth 0.1% of the population has roughly 22% of all the wealth Let's look at that wealth distribution in terms of poker. In the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event, there were a total of 192,600,000 chips in play to start and 6,420 entrants. If we started the Main Event not with all players having the same 30,000 in chips but rather with a chip distribution matching that of the wealth disparity in the US today, here's what the tournament would look like: 64 of the 6,420 participants - 1% of the field - would have roughly 77,040,000 chips among them, an average of 1,200,000 chips per player 5,136 of the 6,420 participants - 80% of the field - would have rou