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.
