Your point has some merit, the dramatic breakaway is really in the 0.1% or so, but that's only a problem with the title and not the article. It's not talking ab

Your point has some merit, the dramatic breakaway is really in the 0.1% or so, but that's only a problem with the title and not the article. It's not talking about the 1% in America. Eg in the first instance it's talking about "senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses", later "Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived" etc. The only place with 1% is where they compare the income increase of the US top 1% vs the bottom fifth - yeah, there he should have used a smaller slice from the top (and the numbers would have been more dramatic). But maybe there aren't statistics available at that granularity, since he resorted to using the top 10% for the UK.