&gt; The distribution of income seems so unnatural<p>Actually, what&#x27;s striking to my mind is how mysteriously consistent the income distribution is with the same family of power law distributions (Zipf-Mandelbrot, Pareto, etc.) that describes such other, disparate, <i>natural</i> phenomena as the frequencies of words in natural languages [1], the sizes of cities [2], the sizes of asteroids [3], the abundances of species [4], the sizes of grains of sand on a beach [5], the magnitudes of earthquakes and avalanches [6], and many other things in the world.<p>Anyway, my point is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as &quot;unnatural&quot;, given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pages.stern.nyu.edu&#x2F;~xgabaix&#x2F;papers&#x2F;zipf.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pages.stern.nyu.edu&#x2F;~xgabaix&#x2F;papers&#x2F;zipf.pdf</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;250words.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-mathematics-of-asteroids-earthquakes-and-literature-3-ways-power-laws-impact-life&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;250words.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-mathematics-of-asteroids-ear...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Relative_abundance_distribution" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Relative_abundance_distributio...</a><p>[5] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;cond-mat&#x2F;0412004.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;cond-mat&#x2F;0412004.pdf</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA57&amp;lpg=PA57&amp;dq=%28%22zipf%22+OR+%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29+grains+sand&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=wV4dBlO4ny&amp;sig=91Mpei81vhas9ktZL5FxZzKrb9A&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiqrbmCs-TKAhXD6x4KHf8SCuAQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&amp;q=%28%22zipf%22%20OR%20%22zipf-mandelbrot%22%29%20grains%20sand&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA57&amp;lpg=P...</a>