Who Are the Top 1 Percent in America?

This looks like it's talking about 1% in terms of income, or perhaps more specifically, earned income ("wages"). It's not talking about the 1% with respect to accumulated wealth. I would suspect there's some overlap, but the two aren't the same. Much of the "1% wrt accumulated wealth" group wouldn't have "wages" (if I'm understanding this correctly).

Two things:<p>&gt; &quot;They find that a significant chunk of the income accruing to the top 1 percent of earners in the United States today goes to the owners of mid-market firms in a broad range of non-financial industries around the country. In other words, it’s not Wall Street...&quot;<p>It depends. How are these mid-market firms financed? How are their customers finance? Who&#x2F;what ultimately drives the decisions and actions of these firms?<p>- While inequality is one measurement, the other is poverty, lack of opportunity, etc. The issue I see time and again (read: pattern) is once the discussion is tied to the 1% (via inequality) the push back is &quot;there&#x27;s nothing wrong with being rich (and greedy)&quot; and immediately the war (for change) is lost.<p>On the other hand, if we focus on the marginalized, their day to day plight, etc. then we are less likely to get distracted. The point being, sure go ahead hoard all the money you want...but in the 21st century do so many _have to be left out_? How advanced are we when such history, a preventable pattern of history keeps repeating?

As someone who fits into the top 1% of income, I find these analyses as inherently discriminatory against individuals in market positions that generate high incomes, a la Obama&#x27;s &quot;you didn&#x27;t build that&quot; statement.<p>In other words, is it morally wrong for the secretary in a medical office to be paid less than what the physician owner takes home in salary&#x2F;dividends? The analysis intuits this position, and pessimistically states at the end that nothing will change for the secretary, attributed earlier to a political economy working against their interests.<p>Individuals make decisions throughout their life, especially early on, that determine the course of their futures. Do they have teenage pregnancy? Do they study hard in high school or trade school or professional school or engineering school? Do they have business intuition to start their own business?<p>I think the indictment should be against the University-government complex which tricks young people into taking substantial debt to chase degrees in fields with no long term potential for high earnings.

Any time I see an article focusing on <i>income</i> inequality instead of <i>wealth</i> inequality, I know I&#x27;m about to get my dose of invisible hand worship for the day. NYT statistic was that wealthiest 1% holds more than the bottom 90% combined.<p>Top 1% wealth (roughly $10M and up) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;net-worth-brackets-wealth-brackets-one-percent&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;net-worth-brackets-wealth-brackets-one-per...</a><p>Top 1% income (roughly $400K and up) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;united-states-household-income-brackets-percentiles&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...</a><p>Per Wikipedia, top 0.12% for household income is around $1.6M. Nothing to sneeze at, but we all know many people make <i>much</i> more.<p>The distribution in the tail is so extreme that singling out top 1% to top 0.1% of incomes seems like cherry-picking to focus on groups that provide services and exclude groups that make money with money.

If I’m reading this properly I’ve seen this dynamic countless times in middle market firms - founder&#x2F;owner&#x2F;CEO’s paying themselves $150k&#x2F;year salary at companys doing $5m-$30m EBITDA. I.e. they pay themselves way below market because six vs half a dozen and optically having a lower salary is better.

&gt;Secondly—and relatedly—S-corp owners are getting rich because so much of the revenue being generated by their enterprises is going into their own, rather than their staffs’, pockets. This may be occurring even in the absence of any nefarious Dickensian scraping of value out of exploited workers<p>If owners are pocketing more revenue, in lieu of distributing it as profit sharing or employee salary increases, that would seem to indicate the salary bargaining position of current and new employees is not strong.

This is why we need estate tax. It should also apply to trusts and the like.<p>If you&#x27;re in the 1%, most likely you did nothing to earn it.<p>This is one of the reasons people left for America from the UK. You couldn&#x27;t own land.

Misleading. Likely intentionally so. Top 1% mostly comes from artificially scarce markets and pyramid schemes: lawyers (with intentional bottlenecks on supply at the associate level and a pyramid scheme to make partner), doctors (with intentional barriers in both requiring unrelated undergrad study and the hazing style apprentice model), elite university professors (pyramid scheme with grad students and post docs; salaries are now typically above $200k, reaching a million), executives (pyramid scheme based on connections and kickbacks), finance, etc.<p>The only domain requiring unique productive skills is doctors... The rest is all market manipulation.