The NFL as American Microcosm

A professor at the University of Michigan, Mark Perry (mjperry.blogspot.com), compares income inequality in America and within the community of National Football League players. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the top 25% of taxpayers earned 67.5% of America's total income in 2005. If all of the NFL players seceded and formed their own country, Mr. Perry asks: What would their income distribution look like? About the same, he says.

Mr. Perry examined a 2006 USA Today salary database to determine the income inequality for the four NFL teams with the highest overall payrolls. "Interestingly, the pattern of income distribution in the NFL is strikingly similar to the income inequality of the general population, and is actually slightly greater in the NFL (at least for these four teams)."

Mr. Perry draws the following conclusion: "Perhaps this pattern of income distribution is a natural and expected outcome of any extremely competitive environment where talent is scarce, valuable and highly paid, whether it's the NFL or the overall economy."

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ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS NO LONGER Tim Harford of the Undercover Economist (blogs.ft.com/undercover) comments on several pop idols' reaction to the dollar's recent weakness. Of supermodel Gisele Bündchen, he says, "I do not understand why she is insisting in being paid in euros rather than dollars. It seems she believes that the dollar is likely to fall in the short term, between the time a contract is agreed and the money is paid. … But if the dollar was obviously likely to fall in the short term, wouldn't it have fallen already, and far enough that further falls were no more likely than a bounce?"

Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z has also traded in his dollars for euros. In his recent video "Blue Magic," Jay-Z cruises the streets of New York in his signature Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, but rather than demonstrating his riches with wads of Benjamins he sports a briefcase of 500-euro notes. "What can I say?" Mr. Harford asks. "The dollar is surely doomed."

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POOR OR POORER "Among rich countries, is it the absolute or the relative level of poverty that matters for children's well-being?" Mark Thoma of Economist's View (economistsview.typepad.com) asks. "The answer is relative poverty, and it's a result that holds both across countries and across states within the U.S."

Mr. Thoma cites a study recently published by the British Medical Journal that examines whether children are harmed most by being poor, or by being poorer than others. "Improvements in child well-being in rich countries might depend more on reductions in income inequality rather than further economic growth," the study says.

The study cites a recent Unicef report that says children in Britain and America, where income inequality is the highest, fared worse than in any of the other rich countries it studied. The same was true with regard to the 50 individual American states: Indicators of child well-being were linked to income equality in each state, not average income.