While the 1 percent sees earnings grow nearly 1,500 percent over their lifetime... This reference to "the 1 percent" is somewhat misleading. The evil of what w

While the 1 percent sees earnings grow nearly 1,500 percent over their lifetime... This reference to "the 1 percent" is somewhat misleading. The evil of what we call "the 1 percent" (which is actually less than 1%) has to do with social connections and crony capitalism. They're talking about the top 1% as ranked by a metric they defined, which is income growth from age 25 to 55 (15.5x is the cutoff). Not the same set of people. You could have someone who earns $20k as a graduate student at 25, and $310k at 55 as a top software engineer... someone who actually worked to get where he is, and therefore the opposite of an asshole 1%er. The asshole 1%-ers (the socially connected) probably don't all have 15x income growth from 25 to 55, because they start higher. They tend to make $300-500k around 25 and while some of them will be placed into CEO positions or PE firms by 55, there isn't enough room at that level (not even for them) and so a number of them will see (just like everyone else) only mediocre income growth. Upper-class, entitled types have an easy time getting half a million (in private equity and other nonproducing roles) by their late 20s... but many of them never make partner, stay around that level, and end up having lackluster careers compared to what you'd expected, had you met them in their 20s. At any rate, this data is interesting but doesn't really establish the claim that "Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your Career". I happen to think that the claim is, sadly, true for many people... but these data don't really prove it.