Levitt's discovery that income distribution within drug gangs is extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, seems very uninspired. The same is true for just

Levitt's discovery that income distribution within drug gangs is extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, seems very uninspired. The same is true for just about any company or organisation, so why should we be at all surprised that it also holds true for an illegal enterprise? Now, the question of why a drug gang pays low-level members less than (say) McDonald's, is more interesting. Is it because gang members have a higher expectation of future wealth than McDonald's staff, i.e. McDonald's has worse career mobility than drug trading? Your chance of rising from a burger flipper to McDonald's board or C-suite is effectively zero, whereas you might rise high in a drug gang (promotions might be faster if your bosses have a tendency to get shot or imprisoned!) So you could say that McDonald's has to pay its workers more to offset the smaller future wealth expectations.