http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/lawyer/salary
No idea whether everyone equates "lawyer" to "partner" in the US - certainly not the case in the UK where most qualified lawyers are not partners (except in very small firms).
Lawyers does not automatically mean "partner" in the US, hence why I said "in this context". The OP is saying the majority of the 1% of income earners are things like doctors and lawyers. Not that "lawyers in general" are 1%ers.
[Edit: have an upvote]
> The 1% are your small town local doctor and lawyer
Which is, I believe, demonstrably untrue. "Small town" [x] will earn less than "big city" [x] in general, and there are few elite medical facilities or high powered law firms in small towns.
This may seem like pedantry, but it's important to watch for this kind of language: the talking point that "small town doctors" are in the 1% is a powerful tool in trying to convince people that "the 1%" are just plain 'ol folk. You wouldn't want to tax good 'ol Atticus Finch, would you? I mean, he's barely getting by as it is!
If OP had said "high performing doctors and lawyers" rather than "small town doctors and lawyers," that would be a much more accurate statement which would carry a very different connotation.
Handy image: https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp-content/upl...
[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/income-inequality-by-state-19...
I tried plotting the difference 1999-2013 by percentile, first in absolute terms (£ difference):
Which support that the wealthiest part of the population (upper middle class) benefited the most from the past 15 years.
However if you do the same in relative terms:
it is the lowest part of the income distribution who benefited the most, seeing their wages doubling. The very much upper end too. But not the middle class.
Depending on how you look at it, it can be used as an argument both ways. Which is why I hate when people reduce something as complex as a distribution into one number. It's too easy to lie with statistics.
There are exception if your income is in the top bracket.
The only key impact of taxes is to cancel the revenue increase of the upper class. Even the top 1%.
A country could tax the crap out of the rich and misspend. No matter what, we should expect and insist on competency. Not this Reaganesque idea that the government is shit no matter what.
As he's quoting the £160k, which is from the table before tax, he must have used the before tax figures so that's not relevant.
The point is not so much that low incomes did 200%, it is that low income did much better than the rest of the distribution (relatively).
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615...
Interestingly, this is less likely to be the case in wealth terms; many people globally with a lot of wealth (e.g. in agricultural land) have relatively low incomes, and the opposite is also true.
Doctors in the UK are well-paid professionals, but - like scientists, artists, academics, engineers, writers and other members of the middle class - their influence on policy is essentially zero.
The biggest political change of the last few decades in the UK has been the absurd concentration of political power in the hands of speculators, bankers, property developers, creators of sweatshop industries, and a tiny number of "consultancies" that are hired to provide public services that used to be publicly owned.
A few of the biggest IT corps - most obviously Google and MS - are on that privileged access list.
No one else gets a say in policy. Voting is a sideshow.
Policy is set in secret meetings which are unminuted and off-the-record even if they take place in government offices.
The real meaning of "1%er" is anyone who can buy access to ministers - because it's been proven time and again that access is for sale - and influence policy for their own benefit.
I know less about the US, but so far as I can tell the setup is very similar, but perhaps less indirect. You pay for your senator or congressman or president on the way up, and then they do what you want, more or less, while they're in power.
There's a lot of show about caucuses and candidates and voting and flags are waved while pundits punditise. But the real decisions happen with money - euphemistically known as "favours" - on the table, and most voters are excluded from that process because they don't have the organisation, the social links, or - obviously - the money to take part.
If you are not playing at that level you are not a 1%er. Having a six figure salary does nothing to change that, because ultimately your income stream is just as susceptible to the whims of the people who do play at that level as everyone else's.
Trouble with defining the 1%ers based on salary is that it avoids the really wealthy i.e. those with capital
Lawyers potentially could earn far in excess of £160k, though the vast majority would not.[3]
I would guess that working in finance is the single mostly likely way of earning over £160k.
I appreciate this may well be different in the US.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...
[2] http://www.bma.org.uk/support-at-work/pay-fees-allowances/pa...
[3] http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/h...