Not to quibble, but this is household income, not necessarily a single individual's income.
In coastal cities, a two income household making 250k each is not absurd, and can certainly happen with two doctors, lawyers, or even software developers.
I'd much rather see metrics normalized by the local household income, which would be much more representative of relative inequality.
Interesting bit from the article:
> The top 1% earned 21% of the country’s income, and paid 38.5% of federal individual income taxes. The top 1% paid a greater share of income tax to the U.S. Treasury than the bottom 90% combined (29.9%).
This incidentally seems roughly around the income needed to afford a mortgage on a single family home in the Bay Area.
Basically, only the top 1% can buy homes in the Bay Area.
I think it's also important to distinguish by age. For instance, I'm 27. I likely do not make as much nor have I amassed as much as a 45 year old.
This is a good comparison for this:
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-age-calculator/
People at age 25 year olds are likely to make half of 35 year olds. But 45 year olds in the top 1% are roughly equal to the 35 year olds (no real increase).
Am I the only one that reads that and thinks “Cool, that’s a good goal to shoot for!” ?
And this is a bad thing because...?
No one who has to actually work for a living, even if they're earning near 1% in salary, is ever going to be 1% in wealth.
Even in Silicon Valley, being a top manager, developer, etc. is only going to get you a very nice, comfortable life. '
The 1% wealthy you think of when you think "1%" have all gotten it the usual ways: got lucky, inherited, or shadier methods.
Some of this increase is attributable to lowering taxes brings more income out of the shadows and on to the tax return. If we lowered the marginal rate to 1% I think we’d see a lot more income appear on tax returns that is either unreported or creatively expenses at present tax rates.
This is such a pessimistic take, on what in my opinion is a positive development. It means a segment of Americans are wealthier than they used to be.
This isn’t really news. Just a numerological milestone. So more people are getting rich than ever. Hopefully we can make that number even higher.
As usual, nationwide statistics always seem kind of dumb. OK, I'm only in the 5th percentile, but I live in a very rural area, in a state with very low taxes where real estate is still reasonable. So yeah, I'm not in the 1%, but I bet my buying power is at least on par with a 1% living in NYC, SF, etc.
my family makes more than that but we still can’t afford a single family house where we live (DC area, within beltway)
What about the top 0.1%?
Middle class in Frisco
Welp, I'm out.
How sad that, even in 2019, 99% of people are excluded from the top 1%!
Perfect example of junk food news.
“Hey, click here. you probably aren’t making this much, so read about who is.
Or hey, maybe you are and you want to feel like you belong / superior.”
Top 1% of income is a red herring too - Top 1% of wealth is what everyone is focused on. Top 1% of household wealth is more like $10M in net worth. Almost nobody earning $500k will ever amass $10M in net worth due to income taxes (vs. capital gains for those with substantial wealth) and living expenses. It really is a separate stratosphere.
https://equitablegrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/table...