For much of the past decade, policymakers and analysts have decried America's incredibly low savings rate, noting that U.S. households save a fraction of the money of the rest of the world. Citing a myriad of causes -- from cheap credit to exploitative bank practices -- they've noted that the average family puts away less than 4 percent of its
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Top 1% income is $370K/year, ~7 times the mean. Of course, top 0.01% is somewhere much, much higher.
Top 1% wealth is $8.4M, ~69 times the mean.
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Good point!
Not the least of which being that most of the 1%'s wealth is not in the form of salary. Accumulated wealth is taxed at (at best) around half of what salary is taxed... which makes the purpose of deferred interest, being paid in stock options, and low capital gains rates kind of obvious.
Mitt Romney's never appearing taxes and multi-million dollar asigned stock value 401k being the posterchild for that sort of inequity.
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It bothers me, as well, that most people who discuss income (or taxes, for that matter) rarely define what they mean by income. As an example, what does the top 1% income you listed above include? Is that salary only or does it include other income streams? Is it gross income, taxable income, or after tax income? Does include the value of compensation packages and perks? For a discussion to be productive, the people participating need to be referring to the same thing.
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...except for this one dudebro who argued the 1% had a majority of "people not born into it (wealth)" and insisted that the 1% was "constantly fluctuating because people enter into/leave it in great numbers per year."
Cue a lot of non-subtle snickering from a few people in the class.
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I'd like to see something in that vein with a more globalised viewpoint one of these days, because the animated graphs really do drive the point home very well.
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"Don't worry, I'm harmless." It makes me laugh too, a sad laugh.
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