How is this possible? Consider a simple example. Ten bank tellers are drinking beers at a bar. Each of them makes $30,000 a year, so both the mean and median income of this group is $30,000. In walks the CEO and orders a beer. Now the average income of the group has skyrocketed, but the median hasn’t changed at all. In general, the more skewed the incomes, the more the mean tends to diverge from the median. This is what has happened not only in our hypothetical bar but also in America as a whole.
