Not true. In 2014, the 99th percentile of personal income was was $240k, and the 99th percentile of household income was $330k. http://i.imgur.com/cCmRisG.png

Not true. In 2014, the 99th percentile of personal income was was $240k, and the 99th percentile of household income was $330k. http://i.imgur.com/cCmRisG.png http://i.imgur.com/cCmRisG.png source http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-is-your-income-percentile-ranking.html http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-is-yo... $250k is a realistic number for the upper tier of software engineers to make in Silicon Valley. If you work for one of the big companies, your stock options will get you pretty close to that. If you're a manager, bonuses and incentive pay will also bridge the gap. If you're an independent consultant and you're not making at least this much, you're really missing the boat. Are you a senior software engineer, or middle management or higher? Is you partner also? Then it's _highly_ likely that your household is a 1% household More importantly, the IRS considers any group of people who live together to be a household. I know of many people here in SF who have two, three, four roommates, each making six figures in tech. Essentially all of those households are 1% households. As an aside, I've pointed this out to several people I know. Without fail, they always have reasons why they don't count. "Oh cost of living is too high". "Oh, I have to pay back student loans, my disposable income isn't this". "Oh, sure I make this much but look at my taxes". In reality, describing "the 1%" is not a useful description. For one, many of the 1% are people living middle class lives in high cost-of-living areas. On the one hand, it is true that in dollar terms these people are, literally, in the 1%. But they don't live the lifestyles that people think of when they say 1%. And if you think about it, that makes sense. By definition, one in every 100 Americans are in the 1%. That's three million people. We don't have any chance of solving economic disparity problems when our intuitions are so wildly off base from our rhetoric and our actions. Wish more people would think these things through