> "Even in the wealthy United States, most people earn
less than the
> average income."
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/klein
As I also learned it, the word "average" by default refers to the arithmetic mean, unless it couldn't. Now geeks get very upset if you don't say mean, median, or mode to be specific. The author(s) of the current Wikipedia page follow that line. But what else do we have a common word "average" for if not to be used by itself, to mean what most people think it means, and not necessarily to always be used with geeky qualification such as "average (arithmetic mean)"? Here's a random website (picked from a google search) making this claim:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arithmeticmean.asp
Are there those who suggest the "median" ought to be the default meaning of the word average? Or something else altogether? I'd like to see it, because the weight seems to fall on the mean meaning.
In technical papers, of course, you'd have to say mean. The word is used a LOT there, and most often not further qualified as to being arithmetic mean (it could also be geometric mean, for example). But quite possibly the average person (hehe) hasn't learned that meaning of the word mean.
OTOH, I do see something that appears daft to me about Naomi's statement. The word "Even". Maybe my brain is stuck right now, but I can't imagine a real country having an income distribution such that the median wasn't less than the mean. Doesn't that require a very limited distribution, such as 1 2 3 4 5, where the top value doesn't go very high, such as twice the median? And then, to suggest with the word "Even" that this is something exceptional about this not only in the US, but among wealthy countries generally. Furthermore, the US is pretty well known (and I'm sure Naomi knows this) for NOT having the world's most egalitarian income distribution, except perhaps among citizens of the US, whose knowledge about such things may be below average, because we don't think about them often. I mean if we wanted equality, we'd all be communists, right?
It's the kind of trivial mistake one can make when one's mind blurs from fatigue, like mine right now. I think Naomi has got the big picture correct, from a Social Democrat perspective, which is where we need to be to reach the biggest audience of (leftish) reform minded people. And she is as illuminating and inventive as just about anyone in presenting that perspective and filling in little known details. It's also the kind of technical mistake editors are for. But there again, the fatigue factor can set in. I could never keep up with a job like that. I have trouble keeping up with this list, even as interesting and entertaining as it is.
Charles Peterson San Antonio, TX
____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping