6 ms·
The top 1% of the US makes $480k or more in adjusted gross income
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jedberg 9y agoThis title, while informative, is unfortunately not super related to the article itself, which is about municipal bonds, who buys them and asking the question, why are people buying fewer muni bonds than before?
- rb808 9y agoGiven the number of muni debt isn't going down - someone must be owning it. I personally sold my munis after realizing I'm paying AMT on most of the bonds anyway so wasn't tax free for me.
- loeg 9y agoIt's not that fewer muni bonds are being bought, but that fewer individuals are buying muni bonds: > What’s disturbing about the data is that the number of investors claiming tax-exempt interest -- the municipal market’s constituency, if you will, is falling, after reaching a peak of almost 6.5 million in 2008. The likely reason is that muni bonds aren't competitive with ordinary treasury bonds for people in lower tax brackets due to market pressure from investors in high tax brackets. So they make sense for fewer people and rational lower income investors move away from them.
- BayesStreet 9y ago>The average AGI of the 1% in 2015 was $1,483,596 What is the point of this article? Seems like it just spews random descriptive statistics. I guess it gives you an idea of the shape of the wealth graph at the top extreme, but it's too narrow to really say anything.
- refurb 9y agoIs this household or individual? I only see "tax return" mentioned, so it could be a mix of both. A common Silicon Valley working couple, 10+ years into their careers are likely to be in the 1% if you roll in things like bonuses and stock/option grants. And at the same time you have people claiming to be middle class with incomes over $250K.
- shiftpgdn 9y agoYou don't feel a 250K annual salary is middle class? That is a king's ransom in most of the country.
- rlabrecque 9y agoThey didn't say that, they said that there are people that make that much that claim they are middle class there.
- mjmahone17 9y agoI suspect they meant 250K is too high to be middle class.
- isostatic 9y agoCertainly is, however you have to look at outgoings too. It's entirely possible a retiree on $50k who owns a 3 bed house in SF is better off than someone on $150k who pays $60k a year in rent for the exact same house.
- tunesmith 9y agoYeah but I think you need a much higher income than you used to (relatively) to feel reasonably assured of a comfortable retirement. If you believe that a middle class person should feel relatively certain they'll have a comfortable retirement if they work for 30-40 years, then it messes with the definition of what "middle class" really is.
- marnett 9y agoSocial class PSA: Lower, middle, upper-middle, upper class, etc do not map (as much as news media tries) to income levels. Middle class does not identify a level of income. To identify income levels use quintiles instead. Middle class is a social class and annual income has no causal effect on social class.
- nugget 9y agoConsider four different people: 1. a lawyer who works 100 hours/week flirting with a heart attack and earns $480,930 2. a small business owner who sells their plumbing co after 4 decades and earns $480,930 from the sale, but never broke six figures before 3. a retiree who sits on the couch 24/7 and earns $480,930 in passive dividends 4. a professional of some kind who works 20 hours/week in a low stress job and earns $480,930 The press likes to talk about these data points, and it's valuable information, but ultimately income tells a very small piece of the story. Source of income, job security, cost of living, and quality of life all matter a lot too.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoThe funny thing about that is like the press, the IRS does not care about anything you said either
- tanderson92 9y agoWith passthrough entities they do now...
- loeg 9y agoSure they do. Retiree dividends are mostly taxed at a lower rate than W-2 income. A business sale may be a capital gain instead of income (I'm not sure). For better or worse, taxes are applied differently to different kinds of income in the US.
- jpatokal 9y agoPray tell, what kind of low stress job lets you earn $500k/year with 20 hours/week? (Actual job, please, not "4-hour workweek" style passive investment income.)
- dannylandau 9y agoManaging Director at Hedge Funds. They just show up to collect the money.
- Shivetya 9y agoA good chart from 2012 to look at might be this https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/ne...
- tunesmith 9y agoSome of it is just screwy. Like... The average tax rate for the top 2% is higher than for the top 3%. That is as it should be, if you believe in progressive taxation. It's higher again for the top 1%, and higher again for the top 0.1%. But then it's lower for the top 0.01%, and lower again for the top 0.001%. In fact, the average tax rate is lower for the top 0.001% than it is for the top 3%. In 2015.
- refurb 9y agoI'm assuming it's dependent on source of income. Salary is taxed differently than long term capital gains which I assume those huge incomes are.
- tienttt10 9y agoOn a side note, you are in top 5% if you make about 200k/year. I guess most of SE in CA are top 5% earners then.