That’s why I have always considered “the one percent” such an idiotic talking point. The problem is not your dentist.
The problem isn’t so much that the .1% are getting richer, it’s that on average, the rest of us aren’t. “Growth” won’t save society if the.1%ers take all of it, leaving the rest of us in a zero sum game fighting over the same amount of pie…
The huge and growing wealth gap is indeed the problem. Even if everyone at the bottom had adequate food, shelter, healthcare etc. you can’t have anything close to a democratic society if a minuscule number of people control the vast majority of money and resources.
they used to be called the aristocracy and there were revolutions of varying degrees of brutality to get rid off them. Maybe, this time around they could learn from history–here is hoping.
Mere 1 percenters are often people who got lucky doing real work:
Oh, then we still have a chance?
didn’t you know there is no proletariat in the US, because all US-American are just
Smart (i.e. non-greedy) 1%-ers understand that if inequality keeps growing and the vigorous American middle class is turned into a small and docile intelligentsia, they’ll be targeted along with the 0.01%-ers – not by revolutionaries, but by understandably desperate and resentful poor people. I don’t think many American 1%-ers are really jazzed by the idea of spending their days and money commuting between gated community and fortified office tower by armed convoy, which is what happens in countries like Brazil.
Isn’t that the whole point of capitalism? To create a elite of few monopolies that own everything.
Just feudalism by another name.
In other words, pity the poor one-percenters, who just realized they aren’t the apex predators they thought they were.
More like SMART 1%ers realize that their interests align more with the next 80% than with the .1%.
115,000 households whose net worth starts at $20M
I expect the real Masters of the Universe would get a giggle out of this. Twenty million? With an M? And the whole rabble of them run the show?
The 0.00000001%er is having a good laugh at this.
As far as I have found, though it’s mixing different sources:
The top .1%: 20% of the wealth
The top .1% to 1%: 15% of the wealth
The top 1% to 10%: 45% of the wealth
The top 10% to 50%: 18% of the wealth
The bottom 50%: 2% of the wealth
Which, dividing the share of wealth by the size of each slice, you get a relative measure:
200, 16.667, 5, .045, 0.04
So, yeah. The middle class is doing about 10x as well as the bottom 50% on average. The top 10% is doing about 100x better than the middle class, the 1% is doing about 3 times better than the 10%, and the .1% is doing about 12x better than the 1%.
I guess Cory’s check cashed.
I disagree. I think getting that concept out there into common parlance is Occupy’s greatest legacy. Yes, it’s not strictly accurate, but “the point one percent” wouldn’t have caught on. And most people do know that their dentist isn’t the problem (except when s/he balks at paying a fair share of taxes. Or shoots a much loved lion).
In other words, a 99% majority isn’t enough.
A rising tide drowns all those without a yacht…
I expect that the trend towards more people being unable to afford a house and finding themselves renting from the rich will accelerate. When the 0.1% owns your dwelling and is perceived to be paying the police and military to protect them, the future generations will be leading increasingly diminished lives, working harder and sending even more of their earnings to the rich than we do now.
Let’s beat them up and take their stuff!
