Catch 22 - The Quest for Inbound Links and PR

[Web Footed Newbie]

Facts and assumptions
In an ever-ending struggle to make a website important, my friends here at WebmasterWorld say to have inbound links from important websites (PR4 and up). These links, like "votes," make your website more important in the eyes of Google, therefore improving your PageRank.

For webmasters in the know, doing an outbound link causes PR leakage, but to what degree no one is certain. This PR leakage causes webmasters (with good PR) NOT want to do an outbound link. After all, webmasters are hired to do SEO and SEM, increase traffic to the site, and not leak their good PR.

The Catch 22
In the real internet world, trying to get links from PR4 sites is quite difficult, particularly for competitive industries. So, on the one hand, you must get as many inbound links as possible from good PR sites to improve your site. On the other hand, you have very reluctant webmasters that will link to your site because of the fear of leaking PR. This, IMO, is the ultimate Catch 22.

The questions:
Do you find getting inbound links difficult from PR4 (and better) sites?
I've read the posts here, but how do you go about successfully getting inbound links?
How do you get inbound links without reciprocating?
And, on a much milder note, is getting inbound links actually taking advantage of webmasters that don't know about PR leakage?

As always, your thoughts are appreciated! WFN :)

[Spogum]

Fathom,
Can you interpret the following in simpler language (possibly using complete sentences)?

"A strong PR5 page linking - will likely show PR1 on the toolbar (borderline PR2) for the new page - if about 20 links are using that passed PageRank. (more than 20 will not even register). Even if this shows PR1 - how many PR1 links only do you need to make a PR5?"

[Spogum]

Fathom,
Can you interpret the following in simpler language (possibly using complete sentences)?

"A strong PR5 page linking - will likely show PR1 on the toolbar (borderline PR2) for the new page - if about 20 links are using that passed PageRank. (more than 20 will not even register). Even if this shows PR1 - how many PR1 links only do you need to make a PR5?"

[fathom]

1. make a new webpage post it on your website

2. add 1 link to it from an existing page with PageRank.

3. Note the number of links already on the page, (you are linking from to the new webpage)

4. Wait for Google to crawl the new page, and re-calculate PageRank.

5. observed the results.

6. If the page you linked from has about 20 links - the new page will be getting 1/20th of the PageRank transferred (Linking Page PR x 85% x 5% = equal new page PR).

7. This would be the same effect as one external link going to other site - from the existing page.

Since PageRank is Logrithmic the loss PR (PageRank Leak) is really small and isn't worth the amount of argument many place is "not linking out".