[Retric]

My point is if 50.01% of the population makes 50+k then that's where the median is. You completely miss out on if the bottom 10% making 10k or 30k which has huge social implications.

For an extreme version southern slaves made ~0 income but because they made up less than 50% of the population they disappeared from that statistic.

[ComputerGuru]

The dollar amount of the earnings that are under 50% of the population disappears in the statistic, but they are not unrepresented.

Their presence in the tally means that the median skews their way. For each undocumented person earning under minimum wage, the median shifts one person over to the left.

I agree that there should be a better way of displaying that info (at least quartiles) but the median is a surprisingly effective measure.