Black Mamba has already brought this up, but this is misleading. The article is conflating wealth and income because the 1% and 99% was always thought in terms of Wealth, not income that is measured annually.
And it was bullshit when Black Mamba said it, too. The division between the 1% and the 99% has principally--though not exclusively--been treated as a division based on income, not wealth. The results of a quick and easy Google search (perhaps the best medicine for failing memories) support this conclusion:
Here's the
Chicago Tribune ("The Internal Revenue Service says that in order to qualify for the 1 percent, you had to have an adjusted gross income of at least $343,927 in 2009. That's using the most recent year's figures available." The article later notes parenthetically the necessary net worth to be among the top 1% in wealth). Here's
Barron's ("While the report studies all affluent earning more than $100,000 year, I am only going to zero in on the section of the report dealing exclusively with the top 1%, 390 of the 1,268 surveyed that had more than $450,000 in annual income.") Here's a study by
Emmanuel Saez from early 2012 ("Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery. Such an uneven recovery can help explain the recent public demonstrations against inequality.") Here's
The Economist ("Occupy Wall Street gets a boost from a new report on income distribution"). And
again ("The ultra-rich skew that average upwards: admission to the 1% began at $380,000 in 2008. The Congressional Budget Office puts the cut-off lower, at $347,000 in 2007, or $252,000 after subtracting federal taxes and adding back transfers." They also offer, as an
alternative measure, the cut-off for the top 1% by wealth). Here's a
Gallup poll from late 2011 ("Politically, the wealthiest 1% of Americans -- those in households earning $500,000 or more annually -- are somewhat to the right of the remaining 99%, but more in terms of party identification than self-professed ideology.")
Politico reported on the poll here ("Of the country’s top 1 percent — those in households that earn $500,000 or more annually who the Occupy Wall Street movement has been protesting against — 41 percent identify themselves as independents, while 33 percent say they are Republicans and 26 percent are Democrats.")Here's
HuffPo, in a piece entitled, "What The 1% Majored In" ("The New York Times recently endeavored to find what the top 1% of earners majored in while in college. Using information from the Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey, they found being a pre-med gave you the best chance of joining the financial cream of the crop. Economics came in second. In a surprise twist, zoology cracked the top 5.") Here's
Michael Moore, claiming to live "among the 1%."
NBC News understood him to be referring to his income, not net worth. Here's
CNN ("Think it takes a million bucks to make it into the Top 1% of American taxpayers? Think again. In 2009, it took just $343,927 to join that elite group, according to newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.") And
again, in a follow-up a year later ("It doesn't take a million bucks to get into the top 1%. In fact, it took a little less than $370,000 in adjusted gross income in 2010 to make it into this elite group, according to newly released data from the Internal Revenue Service.")
Mother Jones demonstrates its lack of sophistication regarding the difference between income and wealth. California's
Metropolitan Transportation Commission certainly seemed to believe that being a member of the "top 1%" was a matter of income, rather than wealth. The
New York Times agreed ("The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast — from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates"). (You might recognize the names of the authors of that article--they're the same two that wrote the article you linked to. Even to them, measuring the "1%" by wealth was an afterthought, as it was with most people who considered the question.) Here,
the Grio looks into who make up the "black 1 percent" ("The income cutoff to be a part of the top 1 percent was $646,195"). This
Guardian op-ed refers to "the top 1% of income earners," and ties this to Occupy Wall Street's slogan. At Wonkblog,
Suzy Khimm wanted to know "Who are the 1 percent?" ("Taken literally, the top 1 percent of American households had a minimum income of $516,633 in 2010"), and
Ezra Klein wanted to know "Who are the 99 percent?" ("Let’s be clear. This isn’t really the 99 percent. If you’re in the 85th percentile, for instance, your household is making more than $100,000, and you’re probably doing okay. If you’re in the 95th percentile, your household is making more than $150,000").
I suspect that it was only last night that your memory conveniently failed you and you forgot how the division had always been defined.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize Occupy Wall Street was targeting John Johnson who won $500k lottery and paid off his $400k in debt and took the first vacation in 10 years and not Chase's CEO who received no wages but took stock in the company he didn't sell, yet.
Your sarcasm is misplaced. The study points out that
that's exactly what OWS does when it speaks of the 1% as a monolithic bloc. You can ignore the findings if you want, but the way you're trying to do so is intellectually dishonest. Not to mention supremely obnoxious.
This is fucking bullshit. Just because you get a one time injection of $500k doesn't make you affluent. Nor does a recession causing wall streeters losing lots of money at once (with little to no wages) affecting affecting it matter.
Again, you're missing the point of the article. If it's true that "just because you get a one time injection of $500k doesn't make you affluent," then it's wrong for groups to target "the 1%", because--as the study shows--many of those in that group just "g[o]t a one time injection of $500k."
Your problem should be with OWS and others who take an unsophisticated view of "the 1%," not with the researchers.
income inequality is a long term issue. Defining it by looking solely at one year, which is an arbitrary and in this case useless measurement of time, only confuses the issue.
Have you considered that this may be why the researchers whose article I linked to looked at a
ten-year period?
I think serious academic researchers
I think
ad hominem arguments make the internet a worse place. What matters is whether their findings are accurate, not what label empty vessel the internet commenter would attach to them personally.
As well, by focusing on these particular metrics, the study (at least as described by this author) seems intent on avoiding scrutiny of the data that would actually tell us something meaningful.
Explain what you mean by the word "meaningful," because I think their findings are plenty "meaningful," given the ordinary understanding of that term.
The ultimate conclusion that the researchers draw, i.e., that "It is clear that the image of a static 1 and 99 percent is largely incorrect" is largely (if by that we mean meaningfully) incorrect.
Explain to me why I would be wrong to think this statement an intentionally dishonest one. It appears to me that you've redefined the terms used by the researchers so as to render their conclusions false.
And as for confusing wealth and income, you should talk to the author of the study about that, since he apparently (wrongly) concludes that the data shows that "rather than being a place of static, income-based social tiers, America is a place where a large majority of people will experience either wealth or poverty — or both — during their lifetimes."
If you search through the links I provided to Piecake above, you'll see that "wealth" is not always used to refer to a person's net worth. You'd have to intentionally misread the article (or be one of Piecake's ordinary New York Times readers) to conclude that the researchers intend to make a statement concerning "net worth" in that sentence.
