When will the beheading start
It is always good to know when will other people want to cut off your head. Let us look at when were most heads cut off: that was probably the French revolution. OK, what made people want to cut off other people’s heads? Extreme inequality. OK, what was the Gini coefficient? Well, one estimate is 59 [1]. OK, so if we look at the US Gini coefficient it seems to be rising approximately linearly since 1980. In particular, US Census Bureau (via Wikipedia [2]) has the following data:
1980 | 40.3 |
1990 | 42.8 |
2000 | 46.2 |
2009 | 46.8 |
Let us do linear regression to obtain:
2020 | 50.0 |
2030 | 52.4 |
2040 | 54.8 |
2050 | 57.1 |
2058 | 59.0 |
2060 | 59.5 |
2070 | 61.9 |
2080 | 64.3 |
So, I guess people will start trying to cut other people’s heads off around 2058. We’re all safe till then.
[1] Christian Morrison, Wayne Snyder The income inequality of France in historical perspective, European Review of Economic History, 4, 59-83.
[2] Wikipedia.org, Gini Coefficient.