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> 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
by 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.
- llmslave2 10mo agoThat study shows that people are worse at estimating income brackets as the brackets increasingly become outliers. Look at how the variance in estimations increases sharply at higher brackets. That they tend to underestimate the outlier brackets doesn't indicate that 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1%...
- 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.