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I'm constantly reminded about the 2000 election. Part of Al Gore's communications strategy was to constantly talk about the "top 1%". Now he wasn't wrong about
by jmyeet 10mo ago
I'm constantly reminded about the 2000 election. Part of Al Gore's communications strategy was to constantly talk about the "top 1%". Now he wasn't wrong about this but interestingly there was a survey in 2000 that showed that 19% of people thought they were the top 1% and another 20% thought they would be someday.
This is how successful American propaganda is. 39% of people believed something that definitionally could never be true.
So you will find people who make average salaries defending the stratospheric salaries of CEOs because they believe they'll one day be the one benefitting or they've fallen for some sort of propaganda such as the myth of meritocracy or prosperity gospel.
Our entire economy is designed around exploiting working people and extracting all of their wealth to a tiny portion of the population. And we're reachign the point where the bottom 50% (if not more) have nothing left to exploit.
Ai and automation could be used to improve all of our lives. It isn't and it won't be. It'll be used to suppress wages and displace workers so this massive wealth transfer can be accelerated.
I get the point of the article. But those with the wealth won't let themselves be replaced by AI and seemingly the populace will never ask the question of why they can't be replaced until economic conditiosn deteriorate even further.
- llmslave2 10mo ago> This is how successful American propaganda is. 39% of people believed something that definitionally could never be true. It's not that difficult to get into the top 1%. Most Americans earn a top 1% income. Even the top 1% of America is only a salary of around $500k. It's possible 19% of survey takers were in the top 1%, or were on a path to make that in the future. I don't see how it's definitionally untrue to believe you could make $500k a year at some point...Let alone $34,000 a year...
- ceejayoz 10mo ago> Most Americans earn a top 1% income. 1% of Americans earn a top 1% income. They weren't being asked "do you make more than an amputee kid in Gaza?" > It's possible 19% of survey takers were in the top 1%… There's a whole field of math devoted to preventing this. Polling works quite well, all things considered.
- llmslave2 10mo agoGlobal 1% net income is $34k, it's likely that more than 19% of those who were polled make that since the median net annual income in the US is ~$50k.
- ceejayoz 10mo agoAgain: > They weren't being asked "do you make more than an amputee kid in Gaza?" Context matters.
- llmslave2 10mo agoWhat were they asked then?
- ceejayoz 10mo agoThey will have been asked something like "what income level do you believe places someone in the top 1% of American earners?" or "what percentile of American earners do you believe yourself to be in?" Often posed as a multiple choice question.
- llmslave2 10mo agoSo you're just guessing? I'd say if 19% said they believed they were in the top 1%, it was probably not specified as specifically American.
- ceejayoz 10mo agoSounds like you're guessing. I'm not; this sort of thing is quite well documented. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-people-underestimate-income.html https://phys.org/news/2024-09-people-underestimate-income.ht... > Barnabas Szaszi and colleagues conducted four studies to explore how well people understand the wealth held by others. In one study, 990 US residents recruited online were asked to estimate the minimum annual household income thresholds of various percentiles of American earners.
- jmyeet 10mo agoSo the top 1% of income is currently ~$570k. The vast majority of people will never see that. But more relevant is the top 1% of net worth is currently ~$11.6M [1], which is vastly more unattainable. Also, the net worth of the bottom 99% is skewed by house prices. You might be sitting on a house worth $1M but when every other house also costs $1M and you have to live somewhere, you don't really have a net worth of $1M. [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/among-wealthiest-heres-net-worth-173043075.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/among-wealthiest-heres-net-wo...
- llmslave2 10mo agoIn the states, yes. But globally it's like ~$35k. I don't know how that particular poll was worded, but in general if your a politician who rails against the top 1%, you might suffer from the fact that people have widely varying conceptions of who the 1% are.
- jmyeet 10mo agoIt was about the American presidential election. The audience was Americans. About America.
- sethammons 10mo agoTry "must have a net worth north of $11M and/or earn $800k/yr" for either 1% net worth or 1% top annual earnings in the US.
- charcircuit 10mo agoI agree with the other comment. It's easy to get into the top 1%. This is actually true about most things. Most people are lazy, don't have the drive to work hard to achieve their goals, or are not willing to make the sacrifices it takes to do so.