

Should the 1% Protest the .01%? - PythonicAlpha
http://priceonomics.com/should-the-1-protest-the-01/

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fiatmoney
"The 1%" is catchy, but it falls well within Dunbar's number. Even people on
the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum run into people in the top 1% of
lifetime earners on a regular basis, many of whom are doing notable good. Once
you get into more rarified sectors of the income distribution, they are more
or less invisible on a personal basis.

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kirk21
Interesting.

Recently I made a distribution of the wealth of the top 250:
[http://checkthis.com/2gw4](http://checkthis.com/2gw4)

Even within the 0.01% you see a lot of differences.

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djKianoosh
Are there enough people in the 1%, concentrated enough to form a critical
mass, to protest the .01?

I would imagine it would take a lot more sheer numbers. Plus, they're doing
relatively well already no? So how many are pissed enough to risk what they
already have?....

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fiatmoney
Historically most coups and revolutions are led by lower-upper sections of the
population in question (colonels & young lawyers being the most
stereotypical). They are the ones who have enough social capital to do
something effective, haven't been quite co-opted or selected for obedience,
and see their ambitions thwarted by the people directly above them.

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joelrunyon
Can someone explain to me how this data doesn't simply reflect the 80/20 rule
to the nth degree and or why it is unexpected??

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tunesmith
Not sure why you're downvoted. It's a good question. I think the main
reasoning is that if that were true, then we'd see that magnitude of
inequality across much longer periods of time (rather than only growing over
the last 40-50 years). But that assumption might be false, also.

I know that the inequality is accompanied by all sorts of bad acting that has
helped "cause" it, but I think that's beside the point. I wonder more if
there's some reasonable policy we could have put in place that would have
actually kept things consistent with where they were in the 60's and 70's, or
if larger system elements were already in play that would have overwhelmed
things even if our various bits of deregulation hadn't happened.

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joelrunyon
Not sure why the downvotes either. Was an honest question...

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pyrrhotech
top 1% is a fucking joke. A cop and a firefighter in SF are top 0.5%. A
teacher in Palo Alto and a software engineer are too.

They are for the most part, normal people that aren't even financially
independent. The sick wealth is all concentrated at the very, very top.

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nilkn
> A cop and a firefighter in SF are top 0.5%. A teacher in Palo Alto and a
> software engineer are too.

No, not even close. If the top 1% makes nearly $400k/year, then the top 0.5%
is probably _at least_ double that.

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pyrrhotech
There are cops and firefighters who alone make more than 400k+. An average one
in SF of each makes 185k a year. Thus combined they are over the 1% threshold.

~~~
rosser
[citation needed]

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jgalt212
It's time to take down the oligarchs. Let's start with the carried interest
tax loophole.

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eli_gottlieb
It's not the exact percentiles that matter, but one's relation to the means of
production. If you work and earn a wage or salary for your living, without
which you would become destitute or dependent, you are a proletarian. If you
earn your living largely from capital assets, as capital-gains or dividends,
and can choose to work or not, you are a capitalist.

The _precise_ matter underlying income inequality is that the income
distribution between labor and capital has become tilted strongly towards
capital.

