fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3752 ]

[ SECRET POST #3752 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3752 ⌋

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I hate hearing that 99% vs 1% thing
People see "1%" and think "small number" but it's 1 out of every 100
1 out of every 100 people in the US are not Walton level billionaires
If they were, we'd have over thirty million billionaires in the US
It's more like 0.001% realistically
Doubly aggravates me because "the 1%" based solely on income is big and inaccurate enough to include practically every doctor and dentist and somehow I don't think those are the people we need to be hating on or accusing of buying politics
I know people mean people like Trump and DaVos when they say 1% but its so statisically inaccurate argh

DeVos* typo

Ugh three million not thirty million* typing from phone

Arguments about wealth inequality have enormous amounts of merit on both the 1% and .001% level. Neither is really "wrong", and while it's true that the really bad shit is on the .001% level, I'm not really comfortable saying that the amount of wealth and privilege accruing to people who are in the top 1% but not in the top .001% is fine. it's definitely an unclear and confusing way to talk about it though.

Oh I agree. Income inequality is terrible on many levels but the lack of distinguish between the 1% and the 0.01% when it comes to political Influence gets my pedantic goat every time
I like Bernie's was of putting it best, a handful of billionaires buying elections. It's clear without dragging the local dentist or something into rigged elections
You could argue that dentist should be taxed more and I agree but that's a separate issue

But it's not really a separate issue at all. Both the billionaire and the dentist are, in fact, real and material parts of the system of wealth inequality in the United States. The billionaire is a more acute part of that problem, but I don't agree that they're unrelated.

Yes that's what I said?
Both are part of then wealth inequality roblem and I literally just said even the dentist should be paying more taxes. But that's separate to the campaign finance problem
The Coalition ofnDemocratic Dentists can't stand up to one Koch bro

Sa
to be even more specific my gripe is when people say for example "the 1% buying elections"
The 1% aren"t buying elections, 99% of them literally dont have the money to do so
When discussing "the income disparity between the 99% and the 1%" it makes sense but people conflat the issues

My husband is a dentist. He earns ~$36K a year and he's a damned good dentist, the kind who will fix your teeth without trying to sell you a bunch of cosmetic shit you don't need. Why doesn't he make more? Because he treats mostly poor people and is compensated whatever the state will pay him. Not all dentists are rich.

Poor person on Welfare with a Medicaid-related health insurance can confirm this. Plenty of doctors in my state have stopped accepting Medicaid and other cheap health insurances 'cause it doesn't reimburse them enough. (I have a difficult time finding a decent therapist due to this!) They've got to pay off that vacation house, second car, and skiing trips!

It is still a small number when compared to the other 99% who are not there. And while the 1% doesn't do consist of all billionaires, "Those sources showed that in 2009, the top 1% of tax payers reported $344,000 in annual income. That figure would be slightly higher because income held in tax-advantaged retirement plans or other structures wouldn’t be included." http://www.joshuakennon.com/how-much-money-does-it-take-to-be-in-the-top-1-of-wealth-and-net-worth-in-the-united-states/ "The Times had estimated the threshold for being in the top 1 percent in household income at about $380,000, 7.5 times median household income, using census data from 2008 through 2010. But for net worth, the 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net holdings of $121,000." https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/economix/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/?referer=
That is still a pretty substantial amount of money imo. Especially compared to how little the people on the bottom earn and have as assets.

And if you look at the world, where 1% equates to even more people, that 1% controls half the world's wealth, which is rather ridiculous, even if they are not all billionaires. https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit-suisse/%3Fsource%3Ddam

I'm talking about campaign finance reform not income inequality
Everybody is missing the part where the post is about when people use 1% to talk about political influence
People who make 380000/yr arent buying elections

AYRT
They aren't buying elections, but they buy a hell of a lot more influence. Not just because of direct contributions, but also because they often have influential people to lobby on their behalf. Like doctors definitely have lobby group power, for example.

Doctors can have lobbying power
But doctors are not what people are talking about when they say the 1% are buying elections, it is the billionaires and multimillionaire corporations
My pedant gripe is not about the sentiment. It is about the accuracy of saying 3 million people are doing something when they are talking about 1/10 of 1/100 of that

AYRT
It's what I mean when I say it. When I talk about the 1% (which granted I much more do in terms of income inequality rather than buying elections), I don't mean just the billionaires. I mean people like the doctor parent of one of my students who literally couldn't fathom why I wouldn't consider Lasik surgery ("it's only a few thousand, and you could get a loan for it") when I was sraping by with barely enough to eat. He was a kind enough person, I guess, but he was much more concerned with tax breaks and Christian morality and things that would help him instead of considering what others might need.

My uncle is filthy rich. He is on the Forbes list of richest people. He has close ties to Trump and was given benefits after the election based on what he did during the election. When you (with the .001% caveat) are talking about the kind of people who could buy politics, he is one. Yet I think he was much less influential in Trump's election than the rich who wanted their taxes reduced. I think he was much less influential than lobbying groups, like the insurance lobbyists. I think he was much less influential than the well-to-do white Christians who want to "make America great again." I also think he was much less influential than the small-minded fearful middle America voters, but that has little to do with buying influence and more preying on people's fears.

I really think businesses and lobbyists and even a larger group to pander to like the actual 1% have much more sway than any few people, even if they are billionaires.

Re: Random pedantic gripe

(Anonymous) - 2017-04-13 05:00 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Random pedantic gripe

(Anonymous) - 2017-04-13 05:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Random pedantic gripe

(Anonymous) - 2017-04-13 12:48 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Random pedantic gripe

(Anonymous) - 2017-04-13 22:21 (UTC) - Expand

This is based on a basic misunderstanding of where "The 1%" comes from. It has very little to do with how many billionaires there are in the US, and exists solely as a metric to point out the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots.

So, for example, in 2013, the average annual salary of the top 1% of earners in the US was 25 times that of the other 99% and the minimum cut-off was $389,436. That's a national average. It takes a lot more $$ to be in the 1% in San Francisco than it does in Fort Dodge.

But these days, when people in the US are talking about one-percenters, they're usually referring to the top 1% of the top 1%, so 0.01%. The income cut-off for that one in 2013 was $8.32 million.

And, to throw another wrench in the works, in an international forum, the top 1% usually refers to the claim that 1% of the world's population owns 99% of world's wealth. I don't know where the math for that comes from; I heard it from Oxfam.

"But these days, when people in the US are talking about one-percenters, they're usually referring to the top 1% of the top 1%'
Yes. That's what I am griping about when it comes to talking about people buying politics

So if they said "point zero one percenters" or "the top one percent of the top one percent" instead of just assuming that people could extrapolate their meaning from context, you'd be happy? You're right about that being ridiculously pedantic.

Yes when the population difference is millions of people
You are funny to be surprised by pedantic in a thread with a subject line that says it is pedantic griping

Life must be difficult when you expect people to speak literally and never use shorthand to describe complex situations. I'm guessing people don't like speaking with you very much. I'm not surprised. Im just very sorry for you.

It bugs me too. Not so much because the math is so wrong, but because it vastly downplays how serious wealth inequality is.

The problem isn't that 1% make so much money, the problem isn't the start-up owner who makes 200k a year or the dude who owns a successful restaurant. A one percenter doesn't necessarily make a whole lot more than a 25 percenter.

The problem is that a tiny fraction of the country is making staggering amounts while everyone else remains stagnant. It would take the average working class American more than three decades to make a million dollars. And we have a whole class of people who make that each year. The difference in wealth is absolutely staggering.

But instead of focusing on the guy who makes as much money per year as an entire city of poor people, we're going to focus on those damn pesky doctors and lawyers and stuff.

You're a small business owner, yeah?

Yeah. That's part of why it's so annoying. (That, and having been homeless-and-starving poor.) Wealth inequality is kind of a Big Deal to me.

There's a vast gulf between what most people would consider 'upper class America' (kids go to a nice/private school, college is paid for, they have a couple of nice cars, they can afford to travel, they can afford a second/vacation home) and someone who makes $9,000 an hour. Like, they aren't even on the same planet.

Sorry, let me be clearer. I agree that there's a gulf, but the wealth and income possessed by upper class people is also a problem, and the start-up owner making 200k a year should also be taxed way the fuck higher.

I'm sorry if you feel that's overly critical of your class or hostile to your class interests, but it's true.

Nah, I have no problem taxing wealthy people more. I can afford it ;)

Of course, we're also running into the problem of how many hyper-rich people hardly pay taxes at all bc of loopholes and such. Raising taxes doesn't do much good when they aren't paying them in the first place.

Re: Random pedantic gripe

(Anonymous) - 2017-04-13 04:54 (UTC) - Expand

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