Extract from a review (in the New Statesman, no less) of Robert Peston’s book, ‘Who runs Britain? How the Super Rich are Changing our Lives’.
‘In an impenetrable sentence, he explains: “This [the Gini Coefficient] is a measure of income inequality that condenses the distribution of income inequality into a number between zero and one, where the zero corresponds to a world in which all households have identical income, and one would be a place where all the income goes to a single person.” Whew! All this to prove how the rich become richer and the poor poorer.’
Now, I’m no fan of Peston, and admittedly I’m the queen of geeks, but to me, that sentence is explaining a perfectly straightforward concept in a clear and informative way. So, my questions are these:
Am I alone in thinking this sentence is perfectly ‘penetrable’?
If the reviewer is so clueless about basic mathematical concepts, why did the NS ask him to review this book?
And why is it apparently acceptable for him to parade his ignorance in this way, when to make similar comments about, say, the value of Shakespeare or Jane Austen would (rightly) be considered beyond the pale in a serious journalist?
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SeasideMan
Pro - 2008-06-20 @ 21:49:44
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CassandraofTroy
- 2008-06-21 @ 19:25:03
Exactly.
Of course, in the original, there might have been another couple of sentences added. As this was a review, the reviewer just pulled out what he thought would illustrate his point, and probably ignored a whole bunch of stuff which contradicted it.
Thanks for responding
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grumpus
Pro - http://bobmblack.blog.co.uk
- 2008-06-21 @ 17:02:23
The penetrability of the sentence can be condensed into a number between one and zero, where one represents complete understanding by the target market, and zero, which can be summed up in a phrase such as "I can't be arsed to try to even read stuff like this ... just gimme more money!"
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CassandraofTroy
- 2008-06-21 @ 19:24:28
Exactly!
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joebangles
- 2008-06-22 @ 22:38:22
Never even heard of Robert Preston I am ashamed to say, there does not seem to be much between zero and one but an awful lot between everyone with identical incomes and one person having everything, and both of these options are ridiculous, maybe I just don't understand it.
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grumpus
Pro
- http://bobmblack.blog.co.uk
- 2008-06-23 @ 07:38:04
His surname is Peston, Trev, no 'r'. There is another review at http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2250712,00.html
of his book "Who Runs Britain?". Looks like an interesting read.-
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joebangles
- 2008-06-23 @ 22:15:25
Thanks Grumpus, had a look, interesting reading and Peston seems to know what he is writing about.
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CassandraofTroy
- 2008-06-23 @ 08:08:11
The scale of 0 to 1 is arbitrary, it could just as well be a percentage, but that would require multiplying it by 100, and economists are too lazy to do that
It's just a way of making comparisons - so an economy with a gini coefficient of .2 is more equitable than one where it is .3, and if the gini coefficient has gone up from .6 to .7 over time, that economy is becoming less equal.-
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joebangles
- 2008-06-23 @ 22:10:03
I had a look at Wiki for an explanation, "100 means perfect inequality" now I can understand why there was an implication that zero to one was a wide range. Presumably the article was written for economists.
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grumpus
Pro
- http://bobmblack.blog.co.uk
- 2008-06-23 @ 13:32:04
A (slightly?) less cynical answer to the original question.
Yes ... the sentence itself is perfectly penetrable. The Gini Coefficient measures income inequality on a scale of 0-1.
But, what does income inequality mean?
Having now read Alex Brummer's review in the New Statesman (Feb 2008) from which the question arises, and having further tried to digest some of the issues raised by Robert Peston's book as reviewed elsewhere on Google ... my brain hurts!
The message seems to be that a very small number of obscenely rich men are multiplying their wealth by astronomical amounts at breathtaking speeds, having used their financial power to maniplulate the Labour government to ensure they pay precious little tax, with no questions asked about their near-criminal dealings.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are conned into believing that because we are "statistically" less poor, we should be grateful to the Labour government for making us better off.
The sad thing is ... most of us fall for it.
The income gap between the super rich and the rest of society is undoubtedly growing as they steal our money to satisfy their own greed.-
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CassandraofTroy
- 2008-06-24 @ 06:40:04
I didn't comment on the content of the article because, to be honest, it didn't surprise me in the slightest.
Isn't this just the way the world works? The rich get richer, and the rest of us muddle on as best we can. Why should any of us expect it to be any different?
Only I'd go further and say it's not just this society. When we compare our lives with most in the third world, none of us has too much to complain about. -
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I understood that sentence perfectly well too. I'd go further and say that it's a straightforward concept that's adequately explained. It might have been better to use a couple of sentences and more words, but I suppose that depends on the readers who constitute the target market.
Tom.