
The top 1% of the US makes $480k or more in adjusted gross income - kaiyi
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-22/to-get-into-the-1-you-need-adjusted-gross-income-of-480-930
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nugget
Consider four different people:

1\. a lawyer who works 100 hours/week flirting with a heart attack and earns
$480,930

2\. a small business owner who sells their plumbing co after 4 decades and
earns $480,930 from the sale, but never broke six figures before

3\. a retiree who sits on the couch 24/7 and earns $480,930 in passive
dividends

4\. a professional of some kind who works 20 hours/week in a low stress job
and earns $480,930

The press likes to talk about these data points, and it's valuable
information, but ultimately income tells a very small piece of the story.
Source of income, job security, cost of living, and quality of life all matter
a lot too.

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jpatokal
Pray tell, what kind of low stress job lets you earn $500k/year with 20
hours/week? (Actual job, please, not "4-hour workweek" style passive
investment income.)

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charlesdm
Investing $5m of your own capital.

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jpatokal
A) That's passive income, and B) I'd like to know where you're getting those
steady 10% rates of return.

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abhinavkulkarni
> I'd like to know where you're getting those steady 10% rates of return.

Index funds?

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tunesmith
Some of it is just screwy. Like...

The average tax rate for the top 2% is higher than for the top 3%. That is as
it should be, if you believe in progressive taxation.

It's higher again for the top 1%, and higher again for the top 0.1%.

But then it's _lower_ for the top 0.01%, and _lower again_ for the top 0.001%.

In fact, the average tax rate is lower for the top 0.001% than it is for the
top 3%.

In 2015.

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refurb
I'm assuming it's dependent on source of income. Salary is taxed differently
than long term capital gains which I assume those huge incomes are.

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tunesmith
Yeah, I'm sure that explains it, but it doesn't justify it.

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refurb
Do you see no value in tax incentives for investment?

Also, keep in mind those very top people are likely not at the top that long.
As someone else pointed out, those could be people that sold their company.

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scarface74
Unless you are a buying stock at a public offering, most "stock investing" is
not investing into a company. The company doesn't benefit from the money you
are "investing". If you bought $1 million shares of Google. Google doesn't get
that money or use it for its operations.

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g4rthv4d3r
that is simply not true. the more you buy stocks in a company, the more its
market cap goes up. with higher market cap, it is easier to invest in new
businesses, acquire other companies, hire better people through stock
incentives, etc...

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scarface74
Market cap doesn't go up based on people buying shares. You are just trading
ownership.

In theory, the market cap of the company is the current value of all future
returns.

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jedberg
This title, while informative, is unfortunately not super related to the
article itself, which is about municipal bonds, who buys them and asking the
question, why are people buying fewer muni bonds than before?

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rb808
Given the number of muni debt isn't going down - someone must be owning it. I
personally sold my munis after realizing I'm paying AMT on most of the bonds
anyway so wasn't tax free for me.

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lr4444lr
What did you buy instead, if I may ask?

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rb808
At the time stocks, now I'm selling those too and paying down the mortgage.
There arent many bargains out there.

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refurb
Is this household or individual? I only see "tax return" mentioned, so it
could be a mix of both.

A common Silicon Valley working couple, 10+ years into their careers are
likely to be in the 1% if you roll in things like bonuses and stock/option
grants.

And at the same time you have people claiming to be middle class with incomes
over $250K.

~~~
shiftpgdn
You don't feel a 250K annual salary is middle class? That is a king's ransom
in most of the country.

~~~
mjmahone17
I suspect they meant 250K is too high to be middle class.

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Shivetya
A good chart from 2012 to look at might be this

[https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/ne...](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-
percent-occupations/index.html)

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tienttt10
On a side note, you are in top 5% if you make about 200k/year. I guess most of
SE in CA are top 5% earners then.

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BayesStreet
>The average AGI of the 1% in 2015 was $1,483,596 What is the point of this
article? Seems like it just spews random descriptive statistics. I guess it
gives you an idea of the shape of the wealth graph at the top extreme, but
it's too narrow to really say anything.

