Forum Post: It's not the 1%, but the 0.01% that have the political power. We are actually the 99.99%.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 17, 2011, 10:38 p.m. EST by Chorito
(1)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I would suggest that OccupyWallStreet does not need a list of demands, but they do need to get a bit more specific on that 1% and start to tell people about just how pointy that wealth triangle really is:
Data on net worth distributions within the top 1% indicate that one enters the:
top 0.5% with about $1.8M, the top 0.25% with $3.1M, the top 0.10% with $5.5M
.......and the top 0.01% with $24.4M!
Wealth distribution is highly skewed towards the top 0.01% and these are the people that have enough liquid wealth to influence politicians and bypass regulation and usually work in or around finance. That's 1 in 1,000 people and a lot different than 1 in 100 that you are currently railing against. The lower half of the 1% are mostly just successful professionals (doctors, small business owners etc) that have worked hard over their lives. They're not the vampire squids in this scenario and are magnitudes of wealth poorer than the top 0.01%.
Perhaps this provides a more defined target.
Read this article and you're realize that the dream of "reaching the top" in monetary terms is basically just that.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html
.01% is 1 in 10,000.
But I agree with your thought. Where did you get this data? I'm curious where I fit. Can you point me to a distribution based on salary and based on net worth?
I like to talk accurately about this stuff too.