4 ms·

This is consistent with the observation that the top 10% have captured a disproportionate share of GDP growth over the past few decades. https://equitablegrowt

This is consistent with the observation that the top 10% have captured a disproportionate share of GDP growth over the past few decades. https://equitablegrowth.org/new-data-reveal-how-u-s-economic-growth-is-divided/ https://equitablegrowth.org/new-data-reveal-how-u-s-economic... "The past three economic expansions have largely benefitted the top 10 percent. In each, the top decile received between 47 percent and 59 percent of all income growth in the expansion."

u1hcw9nx 3mo ago
Also note: Labor share has declined similarly across OECD countries for several decades. Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share.
- stymaar 3mo ago
  > Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.
  - boelboel 3mo ago
    New factories use very few people, part of the reason why it's difficult for many countries to industrialize like South Korea or China did (climbing manufacturing ladder).
    - stymaar 3mo ago
      > New factories use very few people That's both true and false. Yes they need very few people to operate, but building and maintaining still need a lot of people.
      - jjk166 3mo ago
        They need fewer people to build and to maintain than older ones did. Further the jobs from building the factory are temporary.
        stymaar 3mo ago
        > Further the jobs from building the factory are temporary. This is correct, and it has an impact on local employment and social dynamics, but not at the country level. > They need fewer people to build and to maintain than older ones did. That's absolutely not true. Quite the opposite. You do need less people to build and maintain a modern plant than to operate an factory in the past. Also, you need to clarify what you mean by “older”, because heavy industries have automated steadily between the 50s and the 80s, and that process was mostly achieved by the 90s. And I can't think of an industry that was still labor intensive by the 20s and that has been more impacted by automation than offshoring.
  - 9x39 3mo ago
    Automation isn't foreign to the topic. There's some discussion here that refrains from estimating too hard, but I think it's closer to outsourcing's effect: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/worker-scarcity-spur-investment-automation-productivity-evidence-earnings-calls https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/worker-sc... Outsourcing and automation both reduce worker leverage, which reduces wages, which could explain reduced labor share. I'm not sure how one would weight it all.
  - SideQuark 3mo ago
    There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this. What do you think has driven productivity? People simply bring smarter? The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t. And real total remuneration across all quintiles has increased significantly. BLS among others has all historical data to check. If/when there’s a period where there isn’t more gains to be had by more investment per worker, and workers become more productive via their own skill (education, diet, genetic implants,…), then more returns will flow that direction. This is all well known, and easily checked.
    - stymaar 3mo ago
      > What do you think has driven productivity? “Productivity” is a terrible metric for such a discussion, it's not what it sounds, it's merely “real” GDP/worked hours. > The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t. This is the fairy tale you learn in econ 101, but in reality that's not what happened in the period, the businesses that won during the 2000-24 period (the so-called “tech” companies) were companies for which capex were well below average. > This is all well known, and easily checked. That's not “well known”, you're just saying the gospel. It doesn't matter if it's contradicted by evidences, you believe that how the world work so it must be true.
      - SideQuark 3mo ago
        It's interesting you cut out the "There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this." then pretended the rest is simply ignorant belief. > the businesses that won during the 2000-24 period (the so-called “tech” companies) were companies for which capex were well below average. First, it's odd that when discussing the point about total US worker productivity and capital expenditures, you somehow think a sector consisting of less than 1% of workers is evidence. And even on that claim you are incorrect. Here's the datasets for that period capex by industry [1]. You are demonstrably wrong by a large margin. I expect you to have some better sourced or more convincing data, otherwise it seems you're operating on belief, not evidence. If you want to try again, try looking at all workers, not cherry picked examples. > That's not “well known”, you're just saying the gospel Here's google scholar on the literature around this [2]. Go ahead and tell me again how this is not well known? Pretty much every paper and piece of empirical evidence on this points to the same reasons. [1] https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/dataarchived.html https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/dataarch... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,15&q=us+productivity+reasons+capital+expenditure https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,15&q=us+pr...
  - mech998877 3mo ago
    Robots (and other tools) are capital. A way I think of it: if you formed a co-op of sorts, with let's say 20 people, starting with no land ownership and hardly any tools, they could try to make a business. Whatever they end up starting would be a fairly low-productivity business- washing windows, janitorial services, lawn service, etc. The more tools and land a co-op has to work with, the more productive they can be. With a few million dollars up-front they could have built a factory instead. The increased productivity generated can be attributed to the capital share of income.
    - stymaar 3mo ago
      That's econ 101. But that doesn't mean that's what happened in the real world. The thing is you won't be able to name a single industry for which automation has had a significant impact on labor productivity during the 2000-2020. The US lost almost half of its manufacturing jobs in the 2000s and it has pretty much nothing to do with productivity, and everything to do with businesses moving their production abroad. Robots can have a huge impact in the coming decades, but you can't argue that they had negligible impact on the past two decades.
- stretchwithme 3mo ago
  Employee compensation comes from capital. And employees are working at companies that provide robots, etc. There's a return on capital than is not spent on employees. That reflects how much capital is growing and how much can be spent on employees in the future.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
    > Employee compensation comes from capital. All human collective endeavors (with few exceptions) require 3 kinds of human-related input: capital, labor and ideas. Nobody puts their capital into an endeavor in which the plan is for the that capital to provide renumeration for the labor for more than the shortest possible time (*). The goal is always to generate revenue in sufficient volume to pay for the labor, and when that goal is met, that success is a function of all 3 kinds of contribution. So no, employee compensation does not come from capital, but from revenue that results from the successful interaction of capital, labor and ideas. (*) non-profits would be an obvious exception, except that nobody actually talks about investing capital in such organizations, we just make "donations" or "grants". That money plays the same role as capital, however.
  - vannevar 3mo ago
    >And employees are working at companies that provide robots, etc. Just as are the top executives. And the shareholders that have put money into companies that provide "robots, etc.". All these people, including labor, are stakeholders. If there was 5% GDP growth that got reflected as 5% growth in net earnings for the company, one would expect that all the stakeholders would see roughly a 5% increase in their personal earnings from the company. The dollar amount would be higher for higher earners (5% of $1M is greater than 5% of $50k), but the percentage increase would be roughly in line. The real world results are not even close to this "rising tide lifts all boats" ideal.
    - 9x39 3mo ago
      They didn't make the rising tide analogy, I read it as how much could be captured by labor if we increased leverage. In any case, it doesn't follow that wages grow with earnings. Wages have historically been a lagging indicator.
- wolvesechoes 3mo ago
  > Automation, robots, software etc. Nah, it is just capitalism at work. Winner takes all.
- krsw 3mo ago
  Also weaker worker rights, gig-economy, continued outsourcing, H1B exploitation to undercut wages (aka 'take 60k for this 110k job or go home idk'), just straight up bad wage growth in general (min wage pretty much stagnant since the 90's), stock market rewarding RiFs, massively decreased market regulation, more take breaks for the ultra-wealthy, cutting SNAP benefits, bonuses transitioning to RSUs- taking 3-5 years you vest...
didgetmaster 3mo ago
Every discussion about the 'top 10%' seems to make the underlying assumption that the set of people who fall under that category are consistent. While there are certainly individuals who enter the top 10% (or top 1%) and stay there; there are large numbers of people who move in and out of those categories. For me personally, I am in the top 10%; but a few decades ago, I was not.
- jhoechtl 3mo ago
  This is a good point I haven't considered in the past and worth to take into the overall discussion.
- mghackerlady 3mo ago
  This is bourgeois idealism. In reality, the people in the top 10% remain there and rarely fall
- PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
  The statistical evidence for your claim is not good. There is certainly a generational effect in that 5 year olds are typically not in the upper decile, simply because they generally have little to no individual wealth or income. But in the USA at least, most people die in the same decile they were born into.
  - bluefirebrand 3mo ago
    Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg! And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true? I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth" > Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student and his adoptive father was an impoverished Cuban refugee who arrived in the U.S. alone at age 16. However, his maternal grandfather owned a large Texas ranch and later provided roughly $250,000 to help fund the launch of Amazon Oh so his parents weren't wealthy only his grandparents. That's totally different You know what my Grandpa gave me? A used car worth about 3 grand. Still amazing, I'm still very grateful to him! But the comparison here is absolutely not in the same league! And I'm still a fortunate one, because many people get much less than a car from their families
vondur 3mo ago
Aren't most of the tech workers here part of that 10% and I'd assume they own houses in some of the most expensive areas, so they are technically part of the capital class?
- tancop 3mo ago
  defining classes is complicated. if you do it based on income percentile it will always be arbitrary and never reflect actual economic relations. the most accepted way to divide in socialist circles is based off where your income comes from, your relation to capital. if you have to work for someone else thats working class (proletariat), if you can be independent you are professional or middle class, if you own the means of production for others that makes you a capitalist. owning a house is only capital class if you rent it out. from that pov almost all tech workers are professional or working class. with founder ceos its more complicated because they own capital but also work for themselves through their company so you can take them as either. i guess it depends on if you like that person.
  - porridgeraisin 3mo ago
    "I define things so that I'm in the good set and _they_ are in the bad set". It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.
    - lovich 3mo ago
      Most tech workers do not get compensated with stock. A fraction of the best compensated get stock. The next tier down get options with so many caveats that they are effectively worthless, and the tier below them are straight salary with no equity even entering the horizon for them. And yea, once you start getting actual capital and start reaping the benefits of that wealth you start being identified as a capitalist in the socialist world view. Edit: the comment I replied to originally had this sentence at the end > Very typical for a certain type of folk. It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.
cherryteastain 3mo ago
"Top 10%" is such a misleading slice here. The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better. The gains are entirely concentrated in the tiny billionaire slice buried inside that 10%. In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles [1]. Incomes still grow fast in the top decile, but mostly due to assets. And those assets are disproportionately in the hands of the billionaire slice of that top decile. [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/strong-wage-growth-for-low-wage-workers-bucks-the-historic-trend/?hl=en-GB https://www.epi.org/publication/strong-wage-growth-for-low-w...
- pessimizer 3mo ago
  The top 10% incomes have tons of assets, especially homes. Saying that billionaires "disproportionately" have more assets than non-billionaires is a tautology that says nothing. You might as well say that tall people have disproportionately more height than people who are not tall. Billionaire is a statement about wealth, not income. > In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles Which is a very good thing, but also doesn't address anything. The bottom deciles live from their wages. The top decile either put most of their wages into assets, are already so wealthy that their wages don't matter, or live in luxury they can't afford. The macroeconomic purpose of inflation as a tool is to lower the wages of high wage earners - because socially you can't really lower people's wages, at best you can refuse refuse them raises. It's easy to raise the income of lower deciles to offset inflation, either through legislation or safety net. Middle-high wage earners who do nothing under inflation face an effective pay cut. > The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better. He is not normal, he is in the top 10%. His income triples or quadruples a median income. He is of course not doing better than himself, but he is doing better than 90% of other people by definition.
  - cherryteastain 3mo ago
    Point is that income from dividends, rent and capital gains far outstrips the $150k the 90th percentile guy makes [1], which you have conveniently ignored. The $150k 90th percentile earner has more common with the $50k 50th percentile earner than he does with the billionaire earning $100M of capital gains, dividends and rent from assets. The 90th percentile guy is a wage laborer like the 50th percentile guy; they are effectively the same class. The only different class is the capital owning class. Being able to afford a slightly nicer car or house does not change your class. Being able to influence elections, buy lobbying power, play power games, being in the "in" group of capitalism changes your class. [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

u1hcw9nx 3mo ago

Also note: Labor share has declined similarly across OECD countries for several decades. Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share.

stymaar 3mo ago
> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.
- boelboel 3mo ago
  New factories use very few people, part of the reason why it's difficult for many countries to industrialize like South Korea or China did (climbing manufacturing ladder).
  - stymaar 3mo ago
    > New factories use very few people That's both true and false. Yes they need very few people to operate, but building and maintaining still need a lot of people.
    - jjk166 3mo ago
      They need fewer people to build and to maintain than older ones did. Further the jobs from building the factory are temporary.
      - stymaar 3mo ago
        > Further the jobs from building the factory are temporary. This is correct, and it has an impact on local employment and social dynamics, but not at the country level. > They need fewer people to build and to maintain than older ones did. That's absolutely not true. Quite the opposite. You do need less people to build and maintain a modern plant than to operate an factory in the past. Also, you need to clarify what you mean by “older”, because heavy industries have automated steadily between the 50s and the 80s, and that process was mostly achieved by the 90s. And I can't think of an industry that was still labor intensive by the 20s and that has been more impacted by automation than offshoring.
- 9x39 3mo ago
  Automation isn't foreign to the topic. There's some discussion here that refrains from estimating too hard, but I think it's closer to outsourcing's effect: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/worker-scarcity-spur-investment-automation-productivity-evidence-earnings-calls https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/worker-sc... Outsourcing and automation both reduce worker leverage, which reduces wages, which could explain reduced labor share. I'm not sure how one would weight it all.
- SideQuark 3mo ago
  There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this. What do you think has driven productivity? People simply bring smarter? The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t. And real total remuneration across all quintiles has increased significantly. BLS among others has all historical data to check. If/when there’s a period where there isn’t more gains to be had by more investment per worker, and workers become more productive via their own skill (education, diet, genetic implants,…), then more returns will flow that direction. This is all well known, and easily checked.
  - stymaar 3mo ago
    > What do you think has driven productivity? “Productivity” is a terrible metric for such a discussion, it's not what it sounds, it's merely “real” GDP/worked hours. > The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t. This is the fairy tale you learn in econ 101, but in reality that's not what happened in the period, the businesses that won during the 2000-24 period (the so-called “tech” companies) were companies for which capex were well below average. > This is all well known, and easily checked. That's not “well known”, you're just saying the gospel. It doesn't matter if it's contradicted by evidences, you believe that how the world work so it must be true.
    - SideQuark 3mo ago
      It's interesting you cut out the "There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this." then pretended the rest is simply ignorant belief. > the businesses that won during the 2000-24 period (the so-called “tech” companies) were companies for which capex were well below average. First, it's odd that when discussing the point about total US worker productivity and capital expenditures, you somehow think a sector consisting of less than 1% of workers is evidence. And even on that claim you are incorrect. Here's the datasets for that period capex by industry [1]. You are demonstrably wrong by a large margin. I expect you to have some better sourced or more convincing data, otherwise it seems you're operating on belief, not evidence. If you want to try again, try looking at all workers, not cherry picked examples. > That's not “well known”, you're just saying the gospel Here's google scholar on the literature around this [2]. Go ahead and tell me again how this is not well known? Pretty much every paper and piece of empirical evidence on this points to the same reasons. [1] https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/dataarchived.html https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/dataarch... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,15&q=us+productivity+reasons+capital+expenditure https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,15&q=us+pr...
- mech998877 3mo ago
  Robots (and other tools) are capital. A way I think of it: if you formed a co-op of sorts, with let's say 20 people, starting with no land ownership and hardly any tools, they could try to make a business. Whatever they end up starting would be a fairly low-productivity business- washing windows, janitorial services, lawn service, etc. The more tools and land a co-op has to work with, the more productive they can be. With a few million dollars up-front they could have built a factory instead. The increased productivity generated can be attributed to the capital share of income.
  - stymaar 3mo ago
    That's econ 101. But that doesn't mean that's what happened in the real world. The thing is you won't be able to name a single industry for which automation has had a significant impact on labor productivity during the 2000-2020. The US lost almost half of its manufacturing jobs in the 2000s and it has pretty much nothing to do with productivity, and everything to do with businesses moving their production abroad. Robots can have a huge impact in the coming decades, but you can't argue that they had negligible impact on the past two decades.
stretchwithme 3mo ago
Employee compensation comes from capital. And employees are working at companies that provide robots, etc. There's a return on capital than is not spent on employees. That reflects how much capital is growing and how much can be spent on employees in the future.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
  > Employee compensation comes from capital. All human collective endeavors (with few exceptions) require 3 kinds of human-related input: capital, labor and ideas. Nobody puts their capital into an endeavor in which the plan is for the that capital to provide renumeration for the labor for more than the shortest possible time (*). The goal is always to generate revenue in sufficient volume to pay for the labor, and when that goal is met, that success is a function of all 3 kinds of contribution. So no, employee compensation does not come from capital, but from revenue that results from the successful interaction of capital, labor and ideas. (*) non-profits would be an obvious exception, except that nobody actually talks about investing capital in such organizations, we just make "donations" or "grants". That money plays the same role as capital, however.
- vannevar 3mo ago
  >And employees are working at companies that provide robots, etc. Just as are the top executives. And the shareholders that have put money into companies that provide "robots, etc.". All these people, including labor, are stakeholders. If there was 5% GDP growth that got reflected as 5% growth in net earnings for the company, one would expect that all the stakeholders would see roughly a 5% increase in their personal earnings from the company. The dollar amount would be higher for higher earners (5% of $1M is greater than 5% of $50k), but the percentage increase would be roughly in line. The real world results are not even close to this "rising tide lifts all boats" ideal.
  - 9x39 3mo ago
    They didn't make the rising tide analogy, I read it as how much could be captured by labor if we increased leverage. In any case, it doesn't follow that wages grow with earnings. Wages have historically been a lagging indicator.
wolvesechoes 3mo ago
> Automation, robots, software etc. Nah, it is just capitalism at work. Winner takes all.
krsw 3mo ago
Also weaker worker rights, gig-economy, continued outsourcing, H1B exploitation to undercut wages (aka 'take 60k for this 110k job or go home idk'), just straight up bad wage growth in general (min wage pretty much stagnant since the 90's), stock market rewarding RiFs, massively decreased market regulation, more take breaks for the ultra-wealthy, cutting SNAP benefits, bonuses transitioning to RSUs- taking 3-5 years you vest...

didgetmaster 3mo ago

Every discussion about the 'top 10%' seems to make the underlying assumption that the set of people who fall under that category are consistent. While there are certainly individuals who enter the top 10% (or top 1%) and stay there; there are large numbers of people who move in and out of those categories. For me personally, I am in the top 10%; but a few decades ago, I was not.

jhoechtl 3mo ago
This is a good point I haven't considered in the past and worth to take into the overall discussion.
mghackerlady 3mo ago
This is bourgeois idealism. In reality, the people in the top 10% remain there and rarely fall
PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
The statistical evidence for your claim is not good. There is certainly a generational effect in that 5 year olds are typically not in the upper decile, simply because they generally have little to no individual wealth or income. But in the USA at least, most people die in the same decile they were born into.
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago
  Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg! And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true? I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth" > Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student and his adoptive father was an impoverished Cuban refugee who arrived in the U.S. alone at age 16. However, his maternal grandfather owned a large Texas ranch and later provided roughly $250,000 to help fund the launch of Amazon Oh so his parents weren't wealthy only his grandparents. That's totally different You know what my Grandpa gave me? A used car worth about 3 grand. Still amazing, I'm still very grateful to him! But the comparison here is absolutely not in the same league! And I'm still a fortunate one, because many people get much less than a car from their families

vondur 3mo ago

Aren't most of the tech workers here part of that 10% and I'd assume they own houses in some of the most expensive areas, so they are technically part of the capital class?

tancop 3mo ago
defining classes is complicated. if you do it based on income percentile it will always be arbitrary and never reflect actual economic relations. the most accepted way to divide in socialist circles is based off where your income comes from, your relation to capital. if you have to work for someone else thats working class (proletariat), if you can be independent you are professional or middle class, if you own the means of production for others that makes you a capitalist. owning a house is only capital class if you rent it out. from that pov almost all tech workers are professional or working class. with founder ceos its more complicated because they own capital but also work for themselves through their company so you can take them as either. i guess it depends on if you like that person.
- porridgeraisin 3mo ago
  "I define things so that I'm in the good set and _they_ are in the bad set". It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.
  - lovich 3mo ago
    Most tech workers do not get compensated with stock. A fraction of the best compensated get stock. The next tier down get options with so many caveats that they are effectively worthless, and the tier below them are straight salary with no equity even entering the horizon for them. And yea, once you start getting actual capital and start reaping the benefits of that wealth you start being identified as a capitalist in the socialist world view. Edit: the comment I replied to originally had this sentence at the end > Very typical for a certain type of folk. It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.

cherryteastain 3mo ago

"Top 10%" is such a misleading slice here. The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better. The gains are entirely concentrated in the tiny billionaire slice buried inside that 10%. In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles [1]. Incomes still grow fast in the top decile, but mostly due to assets. And those assets are disproportionately in the hands of the billionaire slice of that top decile. [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/strong-wage-growth-for-low-wage-workers-bucks-the-historic-trend/?hl=en-GB https://www.epi.org/publication/strong-wage-growth-for-low-w...

pessimizer 3mo ago
The top 10% incomes have tons of assets, especially homes. Saying that billionaires "disproportionately" have more assets than non-billionaires is a tautology that says nothing. You might as well say that tall people have disproportionately more height than people who are not tall. Billionaire is a statement about wealth, not income. > In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles Which is a very good thing, but also doesn't address anything. The bottom deciles live from their wages. The top decile either put most of their wages into assets, are already so wealthy that their wages don't matter, or live in luxury they can't afford. The macroeconomic purpose of inflation as a tool is to lower the wages of high wage earners - because socially you can't really lower people's wages, at best you can refuse refuse them raises. It's easy to raise the income of lower deciles to offset inflation, either through legislation or safety net. Middle-high wage earners who do nothing under inflation face an effective pay cut. > The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better. He is not normal, he is in the top 10%. His income triples or quadruples a median income. He is of course not doing better than himself, but he is doing better than 90% of other people by definition.
- cherryteastain 3mo ago
  Point is that income from dividends, rent and capital gains far outstrips the $150k the 90th percentile guy makes [1], which you have conveniently ignored. The $150k 90th percentile earner has more common with the $50k 50th percentile earner than he does with the billionaire earning $100M of capital gains, dividends and rent from assets. The 90th percentile guy is a wage laborer like the 50th percentile guy; they are effectively the same class. The only different class is the capital owning class. Being able to afford a slightly nicer car or house does not change your class. Being able to influence elections, buy lobbying power, play power games, being in the "in" group of capitalism changes your class. [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/