Forum Post: What do you mean by 1%?

There seems to me to be some disparity on what the issue with the 1% is.

I'm not sure of the exact figures, or whom to trust as to where to find them, but here is how the issue seems to me.

The 1% label people are passing around is based on the fact that the top 1% of $ owners own 40% of the wealth, whereas 25 years ago, the top 1% owned only 30% of all wealth.

Many people seem to want to just accept it, and live in some fiscal lala land where everyone gets paid what they deserve for the work that they do, therefore eventually, everyone gets the money they deserve as well. It's an easy way to think about it if you're just doing some average job with average salary to get along with the people you meet who make more, but you don't work with. Lucky for you that you don't work with a guy who only just edged you out from being CEO, it really was a close call, but they went with him because his parents were richer than yours, and that made the board more confident, and now that he's Prez instead of VP he's earning 5 or 10x as much as you are.

But take a closer look at the trend. Another way of looking at it is that 25 years ago, 1% owned 30% of the wealth, whereas now, 0.5% (or so) own 30% of the wealth.

That's what it means to say that the rich are getting richer. It's getting harder to be one of them! Does this mean the rich are working even harder compared to the rest of us than they used to? Does it mean the 99% are even lazier compared to 25 years ago? I don't personally believe either of those statements. I wish I could find a report that shows what % of the top 1% were in the top 1% due to inheritance, rather than the people who earned it themselves that the average worker seems to only want to consider. Please don't start calling for the inheritor's heads, either. Dad had a right to let 'em live like kings if they wanted to. It's not their fault that all they need do is hire a consultant to show them where to best keep their big snowball rolling even bigger. On top of that, most inheritors probably do keep working somewhere. Whether they're worth 40% of all wealth earned is an issue for their coworkers to deal with.

It seems to me that the problems arise not from the fact that some people earn more than others, but from the fact that some people take a huge chunk of coin out of circulation in search of status. I wonder what would happen if we abolished income and sales tax, and imposed a 'savings tax'. Tax whatever people don't want to circulate amongst the rest. I'm pretty sure everyone can be happy with that. The national economy would thrive, the rich would get the respect they deserve, and the poor would be giving it to them the most!

The way things are now really trouble me. Never in the history of the world has there been a country that so absolutely envies the wealthy. The bailouts teach us that, as far as politicians are concerned, in the financial sector, the defeated champ must not lose his belt. Never before has there been a society that tries to force it's best and brightest not to consider science, arts, or anything that could genuinely have an impact for the world, and instead teaches them to consider those fields as deserving less respect than the quest for the biggest $.